
Qass. 
Book 



TO THE READER, 



It will be readily understood, that the authors of 
the ensuing Essays are responsible for their respec- 
tive articles only. They have written in entire in- 
dependence of each other, and without concert or 
comparison. 

The volume, it is hoped, will be received as an 
attempt to illustrate the advantage derivable to the 
cause of religious and moral truth from a free hand- 
ling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly 
liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional lan- 
guage, and from traditional methods of treatment. 



PUBLISHERS^ NOTE. 



The first edition of " Recent Inquiries " was absorbed almost 
immediately after publication. To the present edition is added 
an Appendix, containing a valuable note by the American Ed- 
itor, and Dr. Temple's admirable Sermon delivered before the 
University of Oxford, during the meeting of the British Asso- 
ciation. 

Boston, January, 1861. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

American Editor's Introductiox ix 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. By Frederick 
Temple, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen ; Head 
Master of Rugby School ; Chaplain to the Earl of Den- 
bigh . 1 

BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. By Rowland 
Williams, D.D., Vice-Principal, and Professor of He- 
brew, St. David's College, Lampeter; Vicar of Broad 
Chalke, Wilts 57 

Note on Bunsen's Biblical Researches 105 

ON THE STUDY OF THE EVIDENCES OF CHRIS- 
TIANITY. By Baden Powell, M.A., F.R.S., &c., &c., 
Savilian Professor of Geometry in the University of 
Oxford 106 

SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE — THE NA- 
TIONAL CHURCH. By Henry Bristow Wilson, 
B.D., Vicar of Great Stoughton, Hunts 163 

ON THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. By C. W. Good- 
win, M.A 233 

TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN ENG- 
LAND, 1688-1750. By Mark Pattison, B.D. . . . 279 



VIU CONTENTS. 

ON THE INTERrRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. By 
Benjamix Jowett, M.A., Regius Professor of Greek in 
the University of Oxford 362 



APPENDIX. 

Note on the "Phalaris Controversy" 483 

The Present Relations of Science to Religion. By 
Rev. Frederick Temple, D.D 485 



INTEODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 



The favor with which "Essays and Keviews" — a very 
significant volume with a very insignificant title — has been 
received on this side of the water suggested the following 
reprint, with altered name, for American use. 

The seven dissertations, on as many distinct topics of 
theology, which compose this volume are severally the pro- 
ductions of English Churchmen, writing independently each 
of each, and unconnected, save by the fellowship of a Hberal 
faith. Some of the writers occupy conspicuous stations, and 
are men of distinguished repute. Two are professors in the 
University of Oxford; one is professor in St. David's Col- 
lege, in Wales ; and one is successor to the late Dr. Arnold, 
in the headship of the Rugby School. The names of Jowett 
and of Rowland Williams are favorably known to American 
readers in connection with a volume of " Theological Essays," 
edited four years since by Professor Noyes. That of Baden 
Powell * is no less eminent in physical science than in sacred 
learning. • 

* The news has just reached us of the recent death of this eminent 
scholar. The University of Oxford loses in him one of its brightest orna- 
ments, and the cause of liberal theology in the Church of England its ablest 
advocate. 



X INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 

These Essays have a value distinct from, and transcending, 
that of the speculations or conclusions they embody. They 
represent a new era in Anglican theology. The topics here 
discussed are handled with a frankness, a breadth, and a spirit- 
ual heroism long unknown to ecclesiastical England. The 
sincerity which speaks in them recalls the better days of a 
church, which in Catholic ages, and as a branch of Catholic 
Christendom, could boast such names as John Scotus, Anselm, 
Duns, Alexander of Hales, and Roger Bacon, and which 
numbers a More and a Cudworth among her Protestant 
divines. 

The apathy into which the Church of England had fallen 
toward the close of the last century, her indifference to all 
theological inquiry, her barrenness of all theological learning, 
up to the time of the late Tractarian movement about a 
quarter of a century ago, are notorious and disgraceful alike 
to church and nation. It was during this period, precisely, 
— from the middle of the eighteenth century to the third 
decade of the nineteenth, — that German theology, ranging 
through an illustrious pedigree of profound scholars, from 
Semler and Griesbach to De Wette and Ewald, explored every 
field of biblical, ecclesiastical, dogmatic inquiry, and accom- 
plished its great revolution. 

In these investigations and their results, the Church of 
England had no part or interest, and no faith ; regarding in 
her supineness every inquiry which did not presume the 
inviolable truth of her own prepossessions, and confirm the 
status quo of the canon and the text, as made in the interest 
of infidelity. The period immediately preceding this (1700 - 
1750) was, notwithstanding the condemnation in which the 
author of the sixth of these Essays concludes the entire 



INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. xi 

century, an era of wide and beneficent activity. It embraced 
the works of Samuel Clarke, the worthy compeer of Newton 
and Leibnitz and Locke ; it embraced the latter and liberal 
writings of Whitby; it embraced the labors of Waterland 
and Hoadly, of Bingham and Bishop Butler, of Lowth and 
Lardner and Prideaux and Middleton ; it embraced the ear- 
nest philosophy of Berkeley, and the mystic piety of Law. 

A marked difference in the character and aims of leading 
Chucchmen divides, as Mr. Pattison admits, the second half 
of the century from the first. To the writers above named 
succeeded a generation of men who brought quite other powers 
to quite other tasks. With one or two honorable exceptions, 
like that of Herbert Marsh, whatever of learning or of insight 
EngHsh theology then could boast was outside of the Angli- 
can Church. The problem which mainly occupied the theo- 
logical mind of the time was the attempt to prove the truth 
of the gospel by demonstrating an external relation be- 
tween it and God. Christianity, whose fundamental postulate 
is the inner light by which it manifests itself as the truth 
of God, was advocated on the ground of certain facts, which, 
if true, would prove God to be its Author, and belief in it 
obligatory on pain of damnation. The student of the history 
of opinions might trace here a legitimate result of the then 
prevaihng philosophy of Locke. A germ of mischief lurked 
in the immortal " Essay," whose fructification had so infected 
the intellectual atmosphere of the time, so vitiated its concep- 
tions, so 'dimmed and confused the consciousness of God, that, 
instead of the divine Inpresence and informing Word of the 
old theologians, a prodigy in nature was held to be the only 
possible mediator between God and man, the only possible 
voucher and vehicle of revelation. Christianity was to be 



Xll INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 

received on account of its miracles, not the miracles on account 
of the more commanding truth of Christianity. 

Nor did the dechne of faith stop here. The very being of 
God was no longer a self-evident truth, but a question of logic, 
to be tried and settled by the understanding. The living 
God was become a probable being ; belief in God, the result 
of induction. To crown all, morality itself, the absolute right, 
was virtually denied, and moral obligation reduced to the 
expediency of obeying a being who possesses the power to 
harm us " in another world." And since the existence of such 
a being, for the human subject, was supposed to depend on a 
demonstration, moral obligation ceased, according to this view, 
for aU whom tliat demonstration should fail to convince. The 
religious philosophy of unbelief reached its climax in Paley, 
exhibiting in him the strange phenomenon of a right-minded. 
Christian man, a preacher of the gospel, endeavoring to rear 
a system of ethics on a virtual negation of the fundamental 
distinction of right and wrong ; a result commensurable only 
with the recent attempt of Mr. Mansel to base religion on 
Pyrrhonism. 

The practical evil attending this degraded theology, the 
apathy and irreligion of the " Georgian era," found a correc- 
tive in the rise of Methodism. That new dispensation of the 
gospel reacted with heahng power on the Church. Its intel- 
lectual aberrations encountered a check in the new turn of 
religious thought which dates with Coleridge. The " Aids to 
Reflection," fragmentary and unsatisfactory as a system, con- 
tained in its fruitful suggestions the germ of a new life, whose 
development is now in progress. 

Another contemporary reaction, of a more demonstrative 
kind, is that represented by Dr. Pusey, and popularly known 



INTEODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. XIU 

by his name. But this movement, whose tendency is rather 
liturgical than theological, diverges too widely from the prov- 
idential current of the time, and the genius of the people, 
to be anything more than an episode in the history of the 
Church whose theoretical contradictions it has served to illus- 
trate, and whose order it has so profoundly agitated. The 
full development and thorough application of the principles 
involved in it necessitate, as recent defections from the 
national communion in favor of Romanism have shown, the 
entire abandonment of the Protestant ground. 

The future of the Church is committed to another interest, 
and a different order of minds. The life of Anglican theology 
is now represented by such men as Powell and "Williams and 
Maurice and Jowett and Stanley. Its strain and promise are 
apparent in these Essays. 

The term " Broad Church " has been used to designate the 
new phase of ecclesiastical life, whose characteristics are 
breadth and freedom of view, an earnest spirit of inquiry 
and resolute criticism, joined to a reverent regard for eccle- 
siastical tradition and the common faith of mankind. The 
spirit of this theology is at once progressive and conservative ; 
careful of all essential sanctities, careful also of the rights 
of the mind, of the interests of science, and the " liberty of 
prophesying;" carefully adjusting old views with new dis- 
coveries, transient fonns with everlasting verities ; regarding 
symbols and "Articles" as servants of thought, not as laws 
of thought; as imperfect attempts to articulate truth, not as 
the measure and gauge of truth. 

Rationalistic it is, inasmuch as it is Protestant; for, of 
Rationalism, the only alternative is Romanism. Yet assum- 
ing in Christianity itself the perfection of reason, and beheving 



XIY INTRODUCTION TO THE AilERICAN EDITION. 

that the truest insight in spii'itual things is where the human 
intellect, freely inquiring, encounters the Holy Ghost, and 
that such encounter is afforded by the Gospel, it goes about 
to analyze and interpret, not to gainsay or destroy ; reverently 
listening, if here and there it may catch some accents of the 
Eternal Voice amid the confused dialects of Scripture, yet not 
confounding the latter with the former ; expecting to find in 
criticism, guided by a true philosophy, the key to revelation ; 
in revelation, the sanction and condign expression of philo- 
sophic truth. 

May this spirit, which is now leavening the Church of 
England, find abundant entrance into all the churches of our 
own land ! and may this volume, its genuine product, though 
very imperfect exponent, contribute somewhat thereto ! 

F. H. HEDGE. 

Brookline, Au":. 14, 1860. 



THE EDUCATION OP THE WORLD. 



By EREDEKICK TEMPLE, D.D. 

IN a world of mere phenomena, where all events 
are bound to one another by a rigid law of cause 
and effect, it is possible to imagine the course of a 
long period, bringing all things at the end of it into 
exactly the same relations as they occupied at the 
beginning. We should, then, obviously have a suc- 
cession of cycles, rigidly similar to one another, both 
in events and in the sequence of them. The universe 
would eternally repeat the same changes in a fixed 
order of recurrence, though each cycle might be many 
millions of years in length. Moreover, the precise 
similarity of these cycles would render the very exist- 
ence of each one of them entirely unnecessary. We 
can suppose, without any logical inconsequence, any 
one of them struck out, and the two which had been 
destined to precede and follow it brought into imme- 
diate contiguity. 

This supposition transforms the universe into a 
dead machine. The lives and the souls of men be- 
come so indifferent, that the annihilation of a whole 
human race, or of many such races, is absolutely 
nothing. Every event passes away as it happens 
filling its place in the sequence, but purposeless for 
1 



2 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

the future. The order of all things becomes not 
merely an h'on rule, from which nothing can ever 
swerve, but an iron rule which guides to nothing and 
ends in nothing. 

Such a supposition is possible to the logical under- 
standing : it is not possible to the spirit. The human 
heart refuses to believe in a universe without a pur- 
pose. To the spirit, all things that exist must have a 
purpose ; and nothing can pass away till that purpose 
be fulfilled. The lapse of time is no exception to this 
demand. Each moment of time, as it passes, is taken 
up in the shape of permanent results into the time 
that follows, and only perishes by being converted 
into something more substantial than itself. A series 
of recurring cycles, however conceivable to the logical 
understanding, is inconceivable to the spirit ; for every 
later cycle must be made different from every earlier 
by the mere fact of coming after it and embodying its 
results. The material world may possibly be subject 
to such a rule, and may, in successive epochs, be the 
cradle of successive races of spiritual beings ; but 
the world of spirits cannot be a mere machine. 

In accordance with this difference between the 
material and the spiritual worlds, we ought to be 
prepared to find progress in the latter, however much 
fixity there may be in the former. The Earth may 
still be describing precisely the same orbit as that 
which was assigned to her at the creation. The sea- 
sons may be precisely the same. The planets, the 
moon, and the stars may be unchanged both in ap- 
pearance and in reality. But man is a spiritual as 
well as a material creature ; must be subject to the 
laws of the spiritual as well as to those of the material 
world ; and cannot stand still because things around 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 3 

him do. Now, that the individual man is capable of 
perpetual, or almost perpetual, development, from the 
day of his birth to that of his death, is obvious of 
course. But we may well expect to find something 
more than this in a spiritual creature who does not 
stand alone, but forms a part of a whole world of 
creatures like himself. Man cannot be considered as 
an individual. He is, in reality, only man by virtue 
of his being a member of the human race. Any other 
animal that we know would probably not be very dif- 
ferent in its nature, if brought up, from its very birth, 
apart from all its kind. A child so brought up, be- 
comes, as instances could be adduced to prove, not a 
man in the full sense at all, but rather a beast in 
human shape ; with human faculties, no doubt, hidden 
underneath, but with no hope, in this life, of ever de- 
veloping those faculties into true humanity. If, then, 
the whole in this case, as in so many others, is prior 
to the parts, we may conclude that we are to look for 
that progress which is essential to a spiritual being 
subject to the lapse of time, not only in the individual, 
but also quite as much in the race taken as a whole. 
We may expect to find, in the history of man, each 
successive age incorporating into itself the substance 
of the preceding. 

This power, whereby the present ever gathers into 
itself the results of the past, transforms the human 
race into a colossal man, whose fife reaches from the 
creation to the day of judgment. The successive 
generations of men are days in this man's life. The 
discoveries and inventions which characterize the dif- 
ferent epochs of the world's history are his works. 
The creeds and doctrines, the opinions and principles, 
of the successive ages, are his thoughts. The state 



4 THE EDUCATION OF THE WOKLD. 

of society at dififerent times are his manners. He 
grows in knowledge, in self-control, in visible size, 
just as we do ; and his education is, in the same 
way, and for the same reason, precisely similar to 
ours. 

All this is no figure, but only a compendious state- 
ment of a very comprehensive fact. The child that 
is born to-day may possibly have the same faculties 
as if he had been born in the days of Noah : if it be 
otherwise, we possess no means of determining the 
difference But the equality of the natural faculties, 
at starting, will not prevent a vast difference in their 
ultimate development. That development is entirely 
under the control of the influences exerted by the 
society in which the child may chance to live. If 
such society be altogether denied, the faculties perish, 
and the child (as remarked above) grows up a beast, 
and not a man. If the society be uneducated and 
coarse, the growth of the faculties is early so stunted 
as never afterwards to be capable of recovery : if the 
society be highly cultivated, the child will be culti- 
vated also, and will show, more or less, through life, 
the fruits of that cultivation. Hence each generation 
receives the benefit of the cultivation of that which 
preceded it. Not in knowledge only, but in develop- 
ment of powers, the child of twelve now stands at the 
level where once stood the child of fourteen ; where, 
ages ago, stood the full-grown man. The discipline 
of manners, of temper, of thought, of feeling, is trans- 
mitted from generation to generation ; and, at each 
transmission, there is an imperceptible but unfailing 
increase. The perpetual accumulation of the stores 
of knowledge is so much more visible than the change 
in the other ingredients of human progress, that we 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WOKLD. 5 

are apt to fancy that knowledge grows, and knowlege 
only. I shall not stop to examme whether it be true 
(as is sometimes maintained) that all progress in hu- 
man society is but the effect of the progress of knowl- 
edge : for the present, it is enough to point out that 
knowledge is not the only possession of the human 
spirit in which progress can be traced. 

We may, then, rightly speak of a childhood, a 
youth, and a manhood of the world. The men of the 
earliest ages were, in many respects, still children, as 
compared with ourselves, with all the blessings and 
with all the disadvantages that belong to childhood. 
We reap the fruits of their toil, and bear in our char- 
acters the impress of their cultivation. Our charac- 
ters have grown out of their history, as the character 
of the man grows out of the history of the child. 
There are matters in which the simplicity of childhood 
is wiser than the maturity of manhood ; and in these 
they were wiser than we. There are matters in 
which the child is nothing, and the man everything ; 
and in these we are the gainers. And the process 
by which we have either lost or gained, corresponds, 
stage by stage, with the process by which the in- 
fant is trained for youth, and the youth for man- 
hood. 

This training has three stages. Li childhood, we 
are subject to positive rules, which we cannot under- 
stand, but are bound imphcitly to obey. In youth, 
we are subject to the influence of example ; and soon 
break loose from all rules, unless illustrated and en- 
forced by the higher teaching which example imparts. 
In manhood, we are comparatively free from external 
restraints ; and, if we are to learn, must be our own 
instructors. First come Rules, then Examples, then 



6 THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 

Principles. First comes the Law, then the Son of 
Man, then the Gift of the Spirit. The world was 
once a child, under tutors and governors until the 
time appointed by the Father. Then, when the fit 
season had arrived, the Example, to which all ages 
should turn, was sent to teach men what they ought 
to be. Then the human race was left to itself, to be 
guided by the teaching of the Spirit within. 

The education of the world, like that of the child, 
begins with Law. It is impossible to explain the 
reasons of all the commands that you give to a child ; 
and you do not endeavor to do so. Wlicn he is to go 
to bed ; when he is to get up ; how he is to sit, stand, 
eat, drink ; what answers he is to make when spoken 
to ; what he may touch, and what he may not ; what 
prayers he shall say, and when ; what lessons he is to 
learn, — every detail of manners and of conduct the 
careful mother teaches her child, and requires implicit 
obedience. Mingled together in her teaching are 
commands of the most trivial character, and commands 
of the gravest importance ; their relative value marked 
by a difference of manner rather than by anything 
else, since to explain it is impossible. Meanwhile, to 
the child, obedience is the highest duty ; affection 
the highest stimulus ; the mother's word the highest 
sanction. The conscience is alive ; but it is, like the 
other faculties at that age, irregular, undeveloped, 
easily deceived. The mother does not leave it uncul- 
tivated, nor refuse sometimes to explain her motives 
for commanding or forbidding ; but she never thinks 
of putting the judgment of the child against her own, 
nor of considering the child's conscience as having a 
right to free action. 

As the child grows older, the education changes 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 7 

its character ; not so much in regard to tlie sanction 
of its precepts as in regard to their tenor. More stress 
is laid upon matters of real duty, less upon matters 
of mere manner. Falsehood, quarrelling, bad temper, 
greediness, indolence, are more attended to than times 
of going to bed, or fashions of eating, or postures in 
sitting. The boy is allowed to feel, and to show that 
he feels, the difference between different commands: 
but he is still not left to himself; and, though points 
of manner are not put on a level with points of con- 
duct, they are by no means neglected. Moreover, 
while much stress is laid upon his deeds, little is laid 
upon his opinions : he is rightly supposed not to have 
any, and will not be allowed to plead them as a reason 
for disobedience. 

After a time, however, the intellect begins to assert 
a right to enter into all questions of duty; and the 
intellect, accordingly, is cultivated. The reason is 
appealed to in all questions of conduct. The conse- 
quences of folly or sin are pointed out ; and the pun- 
ishment which, without any miracle, God invariably 
brings upon those who disobey his natural laws: 
how, for instance, falsehood destroys confidence, and 
incurs contempt ; how indulgence in appetite tends to 
brutal and degrading habits ; how ill-temper may end 
in crime, and must end in mischief. Thus the con- 
science is reached through the understanding. 

Now, precisely analogous to all this is the history of 
the education of the early world. The earliest com- 
mands almost entirely refer to bodily appetites and 
animal passions. The earliest wide-spread sin was 
brutal violence. That wilfulness of temper, — those 
germs of wanton cruelty, which the mother corrects 
so easily in her infant, were developed, in the earliest 



8 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

form of human society, into a prevailing plague of 
wickedness. The few notices which are given of that 
state of mankind do not present a picture of mere 
lawlessness, such as we find among the mediaeval 
nations of Europe, but of blind, gross ignorance of 
themselves and all around them. Atheism is possible 
now : but Lamech's presumptuous comparison of him- 
self with God is impossible ; and the thought of 
building a tower high enough to escape God's wrath 
could enter no man's dreams. We sometimes see in 
very little children a violence of temper which seems 
hardly human : add to such a temper the strength of 
a full-grown man, and we shall perhaps understand 
what is meant by the expression, that the earth was 
filled with violence. 

Yiolence was followed by sensuality. Such was 
the sin of Noah, Ham, Sodom, Lot's daughters, and 
the guilty Canaanitcs. Animal appetites — the appe- 
tites which must be subdued in childhood, if they are 
to be subdued at all — were still the temptation of 
mankind. Such sins are, it is true, prevalent in the 
world even now : but the peculiarity of these early 
forms of licentiousness is their utter disregard of 
every kind of restraint ; and this constitutes their 
childish character. 

The education of this early race may strictly be 
said to begin when it was formed into the various 
masses out of which the nations of the earth have 
sprung. The world, as it were, went to school, and 
was broken up mto classes. Before that time it can 
hardly be said that any great precepts had been given. 
The only commands which claim an earlier date are 
the prohibitions of murder and of eating blood ; and 
these may be considered as given to all alike. But 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 9 

the whole lesson of humanity was too much to he 
learned by all at once. Different parts of it fell to 
the task of different parts of the human race ; and 
for a long time, though the education of the world 
flowed in parallel channels, it did not form a single 
stream. 

The Jewish nation, selected among all as the depos- 
itary of what may be termed, in a pre-eminent sense, 
religious truth, received, after a short preparation, the 
Mosaic system. This system is a mixture of moral 
and positive commands : the latter, precise and par- 
ticular, ruling the customs, the festivals, the worship, 
the daily food, the dress, the very touch ; the former, 
large, clear, simple, peremptory. There is very little 
directly spiritual. No freedom of conduct or of opin- 
ion is allowed. The difference between different pre- 
cepts is not forgotten, nor is all natural judgment in 
morals excluded ; but the reason for all the minute 
commands is never given. Why they may eat the 
sheep, and not the pig, they are not told. The com- 
mands are not confined to general principles, but run 
into such details as to forbid tattooing or disfiguring 
the person ; to command the wearing of a blue fringe, 
and the like. That such commands should be sanc- 
tioned by divine authority is utterly irreconcilable 
with our present feelings ; but in the Mosaic system 
the same peremptory legislation deals with all these 
matters, whether important or trivial. The fact is, 
that, however trivial they might be in relation to the 
authority which they invoked, they were not trivial 
in relation to the people who were to be governed 
and taught. 

The teaching of the law was followed by the com- 
ments of the prophets. It is impossible to mistake 
1* 



10 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

the complete change of tone and spirit. The ordi- 
nances, indeed, remain ; and the obligation to observe 
them is always assumed : but they have sunk to the 
second place. The national attention is distinctly 
fixed on the higher precepts. Disregard of the ordi- 
nances is, in fact, rarely noticed, in comparison with 
breaches of the great human laws of love and broth- 
erly kindness, of truth and justice. There are but 
two sins against the ceremonial law which receive 
marked attention, — idolatry and sabbath-breaking; 
and these do not occupy a third of the space devoted 
to the denunciation of cruelty and oppression, of mal- 
administration of justice, of impurity and intemper- 
ance. Nor is the change confined to the precepts 
enforced : it extends to the sanction which enforces 
them. Throughout the prophets, there is an evident 
reference to the decision of individual conscience 
which can rarely be found in the books of Moses. 
Sometimes, as in Ezekiel's comment on the Second 
Commandment, a distinct appeal is made from the 
letter of tlie law to the voice of natural equity ; 
sometimes, as in the opening of Isaiah, the ceremo- 
nial sacrifices are condemned for the sins of those who 
offered them ; or, again, fasting is spiritualized into 
self-denial. And the tone taken in this teachhig is 
such as to imply a previous breach, not so much of 
positive commands as of natural morality. It is as- 
sumed that the hearer will find within himself a suffi- 
cient sanction for the precepts. It is no longer, as in 
the law, "I am the Lord;" but, "Hath not he showed 
thee, man ! what is good ? " And hence the style be- 
comes argumentative, instead of peremptory ; and the 
teacher pleads, instead of dogmatizing. In the mean 
while, however, no hint is ever given of a permission 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 11 

to dispense with the ordinances, even in the least de- 
gree. The child is old enough to understand, but not 
old enough to be left to himself. He is not yet a man. 
He must still conform to the rules of his father's 
house, whether or not those rules suit his temper or 
approve themselves to his judgment. 

The comments of the prophets were followed, in 
their turn, by the great lesson of the captivity. Then, 
for the first time, the Jews learned what that law and 
the prophets had been for centuries vainly endeavor- 
ing to teach them ; namely, to abandon forever poly- 
theism and idolatry. But, though this change in 
their national habits and character is unmistakable, 
it might seem, at first sight, as if it were no more than 
an external and superficial amendment ; and that their 
growth in moral and spiritual clearness, though trace- 
able with certainty up to this date, at any rate re- 
ceived a check afterwards : for it is undeniable, that, 
in the time of our Lord, the Sadducees had lost all 
depth of spiritual feeling ; while the Pharisees had 
succeeded in converting the Mosaic system into so 
mischievous an idolatry of forms, that St. Paul does 
not hesitate to call the law the strengtli of sin. But, 
in spite of this, it is nevertheless clear, that even the 
Pharisaic teaching contained elements of a more spir- 
itual religion than the original Mosaic system. Thus, 
for instance, the importance attached by the Pharisees 
to prayer is not to be found in the law. The worship 
under the law consisted almost entirely of sacrifices. 
With the sacrifices we may presume that prayer was 
always ofiered ; but it was not positively commanded : 
and, as a regular and necessary part of worship, it 
first appears in the later books of the Old Testament ; 
and is never, even there, so earnestly insisted upon 



12 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

as afterwards by the Pharisees. It was, in fact, in 
the captivity, far from the temple and the sacrifices 
of the temple, that the Jewish people first learned 
that the spiritual part of worship could be separated 
from the ceremonial, and that, of the two, the spir- 
itual was far the higher. The first introduction of 
preaching and the reading of the Bible in the syna- 
gogues belong to the same date. The careful study 
of the law, though it degenerated into formality, was 
yet in itself a more intellectual service than the 
earlier records exhibit ; and this study also, though 
commencing earlier, attains its maximum after the 
captivity. The psalmists who delight in the study 
of the law, are all, or nearly all, much later than Da- 
vid ; and the enthusiasm with which the study is 
praised increases as we come down. In short, the 
Jewish nation had lost very much when John the Bap- 
tist came to prepare the way for his Master ; but time 
had not stood still, nor had that course of education 
whereby the Jew was to be fitted to give the last 
revelation to the world. 

The results of this discipline of the Jewish nation 
may be summed up in two points, — a settled national 
belief in the unity and spirituality of God, and an 
acknowledgment of the paramount importance of 
chastity as a point of morals. 

The conviction of the unity and spirituality of God 
was peculiar to the Jews among the pioneers of civil- 
ization. Greek philosophers had, no doubt, come to 
the same conclusion by dint of reason. Noble minds 
may often have been enabled to raise themselves to 
the same height in moments of generous emotion. 
But every one knows the difference between an opinion 
and a practical conviction, — between a scientific de- 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WOKLD. 13 

duction or a momentary insight, and that habit which 
has become second nature. Every one also knows 
the difference between a tenet maintained by a few 
intellectual men far in advance of their age, and a 
belief pervading a whole people, penetrating all their 
daily life, leavening all their occupations, incorporated 
into their very language. To the great mass of the 
Gentiles, at the time of our Lord, polytheism was 
tlie natural posture of the thoughts into which their 
minds unconsciously settled when undisturbed by 
doubt or difficulties. To every Jew, without excep- 
tion, monotheism was equally natural. To the Gen- 
tile, even when converted, it was, for some time, still 
an effort to abstain from idols : to the Jew, it was no 
more an effort than it is to us. The bent of the 
Jewish mind was, in fact, so fixed by their previous 
training, that it would have required a perpetual and 
difficult strain to enable a Jew to join in such folly. 
We do not readily realize how hard this was to ac- 
quire, because we have never had to acquire it ; and, 
in reading the Old Testament, we look on the repeated 
idolatries of the chosen people as wilful backslidings 
from an elementary truth within the reach of children, 
rather than as stumblings in learning a very difficult 
lesson, — difficult even for cultivated men. In reality, 
elementary truths are the hardest of all to learn, un- 
less we pass our childhood in an atmosphere thor- 
oughly impregnated with them ; and then we imbibe 
them unconsciously, and find it difficult to perceive 
their difficulty. 

It was the fact that this belief was not the tenet of 
the few, but the habit of the nation, which made the 
Jews the proper instruments for communicating the 
doctrine to the world. They supported it, not by 



14 THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 

arguments, — which always provoke rephes, and rare- 
ly, at the best, penetrate deeper than the intellect, — 
but by the unconscious evidence of their lives. They 
suppUed that spiritual atmosphere in which alone the 
faith of new converts could attain to vigorous life. 
They supplied forms of language and expression jfit 
for immediate and constant use. They supplied devo- 
tions to fill the void which departed idolatry left be- 
hind. The rapid spread of the Primitive Church, and 
the depth to which it struck its roots into the decaying 
society of the Roman Empire, are unquestionably due, 
to a great extent, to the body of Jewish proselytes 
already established in every important city, and to 
the existence of the Old Testament as a ready-made 
text-book of devotion and instruction. 

Side by side with this freedom from idolatry, there 
had grown up in the Jewish mind a chaster morality 
than was to be found elsewhere in the world. There 
were many points, undoubtedly, in which the early 
morality of tlie Greeks and Romans would well bear 
a comparison with that of the Hebrews. In simpli- 
city of life, in gentleness of character, in warmth of 
sympathy, in kindness to the poor, in justice to all 
men, the Hebrews could not have rivalled the best 
days of Greece. In reverence for law, in reality of 
obedience, in calmness under trouble, in dignity 
of self-respect, they could not have rivalled the best 
days of Rome. But the sins of the flesh corrupted 
both these races, and the flower of their finest virtues 
had withered before the time of our Lord. In chastity 
the Hebrews stood alone ; and this virtue, which had 
grown up with them from their earliest days, was 
still in the vigor of fresh life when they were com- 
missioned to give the gospel to the nations. The He- 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 15 

brew morality has passed into the Christian Church, 
and sins of impurity (which war against the soul) 
have ever since been looked on as the type of all 
evil ; and our Litany selects them as the example of 
deadly sin. What sort of morality the Gentiles would 
have handed down to us, had they been left to them- 
selves, is clear from the Epistles. The excesses of the 
Gentile party at Corinth (1 Cor. v. 2), the first warn- 
ing given to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. iv. 3), the 
first warning given to the Galatians (Gal. v. 19), 
the description of the Gentile world in the Epistle to 
the Romans, are sufficient indications of the prevail- 
ing Gentile sin. But St. James, writing to the He- 
brew Christians, says not a word upon the subject ; 
and St. Peter barely alludes to it. 

The idea of monotheism and the principle of purity 
might seem hardly enough to be the chief results of 
so systematic a discipline as that of the Hebrews ; 
but, in reality, they are the cardinal points in educa- 
tion. The idea of monotheism out-tops all other ideas 
in dignity and worth. The spirituality of God in- 
volves in it the supremacy of conscience, the immor- 
tahty of the soul, the final judgment of the human 
race ; for we know the other world, and can only know 
it, by analogy, drawn from our own experience. With 
what, then, shall we compare God ? With the spirit- 
ual or the fleshly part of our nature ? On the answer 
depends the whole bent of our religion and of our 
morality ; for that in ourselves which we choose as 
the nearest analogy of God, will, of course, be looked 
on as the ruling and lasting part of our being. If he 
be one and spiritual, then the spiritual power within 
us, which proclaims its own unity and independence 
of matter by the universahty of its decrees, must be 



16 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

the rightful monarch of our lives ; but if there be 
Gods many and Lords many, with bodily appetites 
and animal passions, then the voice of conscience is 
but one of those wide-spread delusions, which, some 
for a longer, some for a shorter period, have, before 
now, misled our race. Again : the same importance 
which we assign to monotheism as a creed, we must 
assign to chastity as a virtue. Among all the vices 
which it is necessary to subdue in order to build up 
the human character, there is none to be compared, 
in strength or in virulence, with that of impurity. It 
can outlive and kill a thousand virtues ; it can corrupt 
the most generous heart ; it can madden the soberest 
intellect ; it can debase the loftiest imagination. But, 
besides being so poisonous in character, it is, above 
all others, most difficult to conquer ; and the people 
whose extraordinary toughness of nature has enabled 
it to outlive Egyptian Pharaohs, and Assyrian kings, 
and Roman Caesars, and Mussulman caliphs, was well 
matched against a power of evil which has battled 
with the human spirit ever since the creation, and has 
inflicted, and may yet inflict, more deadly blows than 
any other power we know of. 

Such was the training of the Hebrews. Other na- 
tions, meanwliile, had a training parallel to, and con- 
temporaneous with, theirs. The natural religions — 
shadows projected by the spiritual light within shin- 
ing on the dark problems without — were all, in 
reality, systems of law, given also by God, though 
not given by revelation, but by the working of nature, 
and consequently so distorted and adulterated, that, 
in lapse of time, the divine element in them had 
almost perished. The poetical gods of Greece, the 
legendary gods of Rome, the animal-worship of Egypt, 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 17 

the sun-worship of the East, all accompanied by sys- 
tems of law and civil goTernment springing from the 
same sources as themselves, — namely, the character 
and temper of the several nations, — were the means 
of educating these people to similar purposes, m the 
economy of Providence, to that for which the Hebrews 
were destined. 

Wlien the seed of the gospel was first sown, the 
field which had been prepared to receive it may be 
divided into four chief divisions, — Rome, Greece, 
Asia, and Jud^a. Each of these contributed some- 
thing to the growth of the future church. And the 
growth of the church is, in this case, the development 
of the human race. It cannot, indeed, yet be said 
that all humanity has united into one stream ; but the 
Christian nations have so unquestionably taken the 
lead amongst their fellows, that, although it is likely 
enough the unconverted peoples may have a real part 
to play, that part must be plainly quite subordinate, 
— subordinate in a sense in which neither Rome nor 
Greece, nor perhaps even Asia, was subordinate to 
Judsea. 

It is not difficult to trace the chief elements of 
civilization which we owe to each of the four. Rome 
contributed her admirable spirit of order and organi- 
zation. To her had been given the genius of govern- 
ment. She had been trained to it by centuries of 
difficult and tumultuous history. Storms which would 
have rent asunder the framework of any other polity 
only practised her in the art of controlling popular 
passions ; and when she began to aim consciously 
at the empire of the world, she had already learned 
her lesson. She had learned it, as the Hebrews had 
learned theirs, by an enforced obedience to her own 



18 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

system. In no nation of antiquity had civil officers 
the same unquestioned authority during their term of 
office, or laws and judicial rules the same reverence. 
That which religion was to the Jew, including even 
the formalism which incrusted and fettered it, law 
was to the Roman ; and law was the lesson which 
Rome was intended to teach the world. Hence the 
Bishop of Rome soon became the head of the church. 
Rome was, in fact, the centre of the traditions which 
had once governed the world ; and their spirit still 
remained ; and the Roman Church developed into the 
papacy, simply because a head was wanted, and no 
better one could be found. Hence again, in all the 
doctrinal disputes of the fourth and fifth centuries 
the decisive voice came from Rome. Every contro- 
versy was finally settled by her opinion ; because she 
alone possessed the art of framing formulas which 
could hold together, in any reasonable measure, the 
endless variety of sentiments and feelings which the 
church by that time comprised. It was this power 
of administering law which enabled the Western 
Church, in the time of Charlemagne, to undertake, 
by means of her bishops, the task of training and 
civilizing the new population of Europe. To Rome 
we owe the forms of local government wliich in 
England have saved liberty, and elsewhere have miti- 
gated despotism. Justinian's laws have penetrated 
into all modern legislation, and almost all improve- 
ments bring us only nearer to his code. Much of the 
spirit of modern politics came from Greece ; much 
from the woods of Germany : but the skeleton and 
framework is almost entirely Roman. And it is 
not this framework only that comes from Rome : 
the moral sentiments and the moral force, which lio 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 19 

at the back of all political life, and are absolutely 
indispensable to its vigor, are, in great measure, 
Roman too. It is true that the life and power of 
all morality whatever will always be drawn from the 
New Testament ; yet it is in the history of Rome, 
rather than in the Bible, that we find our models and 
precepts of political duty, and especially of the duty 
of patriotism. St. Paul bids us follow whatsoever 
things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good 
report. But, except through such general appeals 
to natural feeling, it would be difficult to prove from 
the New Testament that cowardice was not only dis- 
graceful, but sinful, and that love of our country was 
an exalted duty of humanity. That lesson our con- 
sciences have learnt from the teaching of ancient 
Rome. 

To Greece was intrusted the cultivation of the 
reason and the taste. Her gift to mankind has been 
science and art. There was little in her temper of 
the spirit of reverence. Her morality and her re- 
ligion did not spring from the conscience. Her gods 
were the creatures of imagination, not of spiritual 
need. Her highest idea was, not holiness, as with the 
Hebrews ; nor law, as with the Romans ; but beauty. 
Even Aristotle, who assuredly gave way to mere sen- 
timent as little as any Greek that ever lived, placed 
the Beautiful (ro koXov) at the head of his moral sys- 
tem, not the Right nor the Holy. Greece, in fact, 
was not looking at another world, nor even striving 
to organize the present, but rather aiming at the 
development of free nature. The highest possible 
cultivation of the individual, the most finished per- 
fection of the natural faculties, was her dream. It is 
true that her philosophers are ever talking of subor- 



20 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

dinating the individual to the State ; but, in reality, 
there never has been a period in history, nor a country 
in the world, in which the peculiarities of individual 
temper and character had freer play. This is not the 
best atmosphere for political action ; but it is better 
than any other for giving vigor and life to the im- 
pulses of genius, and for cultivating those faculties 
— the reason and taste — in which the highest genius 
can be shown. Such a cultivation needs discipline 
less than any ; and of all the nations, Greece had 
the least of systematic discipline, least of instinctive 
deference to any one leading idea. But, for the same 
reason, the cultivation required less time than any 
other ; and the national life of Greece is the shortest 
of all. Greek history hardly begins before Solon, and 
it hardly continues after Alexander ; barely covering 
two hundred years. But its fruits are eternal. To 
the Greeks we owe the logic which has ruled the 
minds of all thinkers since. All our natural and 
physical science really begins with the Greeks ; and, 
indeed, would have been impossible had not Greece 
taught men how to reason. To the Greeks we owe 
the corrective which conscience needs to borrow 
from nature. Conscience, startled at the awful truths 
which she has to reveal, too often threatens to with- 
draw the soul into gloomy and perverse asceticism : 
then is needed the beauty which Greece taught us 
to admire, to show us another aspect of the Divine 
Attributes. To the Greeks we owe all modern litera- 
ture ; for though there is other literature even older 
than the Greek, — the Asiatic, for instance, and the 
Hebrew, — yet we did not learn this lesson from 
them : they had not the genial life which was needed 
to kindle other nations with the communication of 
their own fire. 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 21 

The discipline of Asia was the never-ending suc- 
cession of conquering dynasties, following in each 
other's track like waves, — an ever-moving yet never- 
advancing ocean. Cycles of change were succes- 
sively passing over her ; and yet at the end of every 
cycle she stood where she had stood before, and 
nearly where she stands now. The growth of Europe 
has dwarfed her in comparison, and she is paralyzed 
in presence of a gigantic strength, younger but 
mightier than her own. But in herself she is no 
weaker than she ever was. The monarchs who once 
led Assyrian or Babylonian or Persian armies across 
half the world impose on us by the vast extent and 
rapidity of their conquests ; but these conquests had 
in reality no substance, no inherent strength. This 
perpetual baffling of all earthly progress taught Asia 
to seek her inspiration in rest. She learned to fix 
her thoughts upon anotlier world, and was disciplined 
to check by her silent protest the over-earthly, over- 
practical tendency of the Western nations. She was 
ever the one to refuse to measure heaven by the 
standard of earth. Her teeming imagination filled 
the church with thoughts " undreamt of in our 
philosophy." She had been the instrument selected 
to teach the Hebrews the doctrine of the immortality 
of the soul ; for, whatever may be said of the early 
notions on this subject, it is unquestionable, that in 
Babylon the Jews first attained the clearness and cer- 
tainty in regard to it which we find in the teaching 
of the Pharisees. So again, Athanasius, a thorough 
Asiatic in sentiment and in mode of arguing, was the 
bulwark of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Western 
nations are always tempted to make reason not only 
supreme, but despotic ; and dislike to acknowledge 



22 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

mysteries even in religion. They are inclined to con- 
fine all doctrines within the limits of spiritual utility, 
and to refuse to listen to dim voices and whispers 
from within, — those instincts of doubt and reverence 
and awe, — which yet are, in their place and degree, 
messages from the depths of our being. Asia supplies 
the corrective by perpetually leaning to the mysteri- 
ous. When left to herself, she settles down to base- 
less dreams, and sometimes to monstrous and revolting 
fictions ; but her influence has never ceased to be felt, 
and could not be lost without serious damage. 

Thus the Hebrews may be said to have disci- 
plined the human conscience ; Rome, the human will; 
Greece, the reason and taste ; Asia, the spiritual imag- 
ination. Other races that have been since admitted 
into Christendom also did their parts, and others 
may yet have something to contribute ; for, though 
the time for discipline is childhood, yet there is no 
precise line beyond which all discipline ceases. Even 
the gray-haired man has yet some small capacity for 
learning like a child ; and, even in the maturity of 
the world, the early modes of teaching may yet find 
a place. But the childhood of the world was over 
when our Lord appeared on earth. The tutors and 
governors had done their work. It was time that the 
second teacher of the human race should begin his 
labor. The second teacher is Example. 

The child is not insensible to the influence of 
example. Even in the e rliest years, the manners, 
the language, the principles, of the elder begin to 
mould the character of the younger. There are not a 
few of our acquirements whicli we learn by example, 
without any, or with very little, direct instruction ; as, 
for instance, to speak and to walk. But still example 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 23 

at that age is secondary. The child is quite con- 
scious that he is not on such an equality with grown- 
up friends as to enable him to do as they do. He 
imitates, but he knows that it is merely play ; and he 
is quite willing to be told that he must not do this or 
that till he is older. As time goes on, and the faculties 
expand, the power of discipline to guide the actions 
and to mould the character decreases ; and, in the same 
proportion, the power of example grows. The moral 
atmosphere must be brutish indeed which can do 
deep harm to a child of four years. But what is 
harmless at four is pernicious at six, and almost fatal 
at twelve. The religious tone of a household will 
hardly make much impression on an infant ; but it 
will deeply engTave its lessons on the heart of a boy 
growing towards manhood. Different faculties within 
us begin to feel the power of this new guide at dif- 
ferent times. The moral sentiments are perhaps the 
first to expand to the influence ; but gradually the 
example of those among whom the life is cast lays 
hold of all the soul, — of the tastes, of the opinions, of 
the aims, of the temper. As each restraint of dis- 
cipline is successively cast off, the soul does not gain 
at first a real, but only an apparent freedom. The 
youth when too old for discipline is not yet strong 
enough to guide his life by fixed principles. He is 
led by his emotions and impulses. He admires and 
loves, he condemns and dislikes, with enthusiasm ; 
and his love and admiration, his disapproval and 
dislike, are not his own, but borrowed from his 
society. He can appreciate a character, though he 
cannot yet appreciate a principle. He cannot walk 
by reason and conscience alone : he still needs those 
" supplies to the imperfection of our nature " which 



24 THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 

are given by the higher passions. He cannot follow 
what his heart does not love as well as his reason 
approve ; and he cannot love what is presented to 
him as an abstract rule of life, but requires a living 
person. He needs to see Virtue in the concrete, 
before he can recognize her aspect as a divine idea. 
He instinctively copies those whom he admires ; and 
in doing so imbibes whatever gives the color to their 
character. He repeats opinions without really under- 
standing them ; and in that way admits their infec- 
tion into his judgment. He acquires habits which 
seem of no consequence, but which are the channels 
of a thousand new impulses to his soul. If he reads, 
he treats the characters that he meets with in his book 
as friends or enemies ; and so, unconsciously, allows 
them to mould his soul. "When he seems most in- 
dependent, most defiant of external guidance, he is, 
in reality, only so much the less master of himself ; 
only so much the more guided and formed, not indeed 
by the will, but by the example and sympathy of 
others. 

The power of example probably never ceases during 
life. Even old ago is not wholly uninfluenced by 
society ; and a change of companions acts upon the 
character long after the character would appear in- 
capable of further development. The influence, in 
fact, dies out just as it grew ; and as it is impossible 
to mark its beginning, so is it to mark its end. The 
child is governed by the will of its parents ; the man, 
by principles and habits of his own. But neither 
is insensible to the influence of associates, though 
neither finds in that influence the predominant power 
of his life. 

This, then, which is born with our birth and dies 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 25 

with our death, attains its maximum at some point in 
the passage from one to the other ; and this point is 
just the meeting-point of the child and the man, — 
the brief interval which separates restraint from 
liberty. Young men at this period are learning a 
peculiar lesson. They seem to those who talk to 
them to be imbibing, from their associates and their 
studies, principles both of faith and conduct ; but the 
rapid fluctuations of their minds show that their 
opinions have not really the nature of principles. 
They are really learning, not principles, but the ma- 
terials out of which principles are made. They drink 
in the lessons of generous impulse, warm unselfish- 
ness, courage, self-devotion, romantic disregard of 
worldly calculations,- without knowing what are the 
grounds of their own approbation, or caring to ana- 
lyze the laws and ascertain the limits of such guides 
of conduct. They believe without exact attention 
to the evidence of their belief; and their opinions 
have accordingly the richness and warmth that be- 
longs to sentiment, but not the clearness or firmness 
that can be given by reason. These affections, which 
are now kindled in their hearts by the contact of 
their fellows, will afterwards be the reservoir of life 
and light with wliich their faith and their highest 
conceptions will be animated and colored. The opin- 
ions now picked up, apparently not really, at random, 
must hereafter give reality to the clearer and more 
settled convictions of mature manhood. If it were 
not for these, the ideas and laws afterwards supplied 
by reason would be empty forms of thought, without 
body or substance ; the faith would run a risk of 
being the form of godliness, without the power there- 
of. And hence the lessons of this time have such 
2 



26 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

an attractiveness in their warmth and life tliat they 
are very reluctantly exchanged for the truer and pro- 
founder, but, at first sight, colder wisdom which is 
destined to follow them. To almost all men, this 
period is a bright spot, to which the memory ever 
afterward loves to recur ; and even those who can 
remember nothing but folly, — folly, too, which they 
have repented and relinquished, — yet find a name- 
less charm in recalling such folly as that. For, indeed, 
even folly itself, at this age, is sometimes the cup out 
of which men qiiaff the richest blessings of our na- 
ture, — simplicity, generosity, affection. This is the 
seed-time of the soul's harvest, and contains, the prom- 
ise of the year : it is the time for love and marriage, 
the time for forming life-long friendships. The after- 
life may be more contented, but can rarely be so glad 
and joyous. Two things we need to crown its bless- 
ings ; one is, that the friends whom we then learn to 
love, and the opinions which we then learn to cherish, 
may stand the test of time, and deserve the esteem 
and approval of calmer thoughts and wider experi- 
ence ; the other, that our hearts may have depth 
enough to drink largely of that which God is holding 
to our lips, and never again to lose the fire and spirit 
of the draught. There is nothing more beautiful than 
a manhood surrounded by the friends, upholding the 
principles, and filled with the energy of the spring- 
time of life. But even if these highest blessings be 
denied, — if we have been compelled to change opin- 
ions and to give up friends, and the cold experience of 
the world has extinguished the heat of youth, — still 
the heart will instinctively recur to that happy time, 
to explain to itself what is meant by love, and what 
by happiness. 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WOKLD. 27 

Of course this is only one side of the picture. This 
keen susceptibility to pleasure and joy implies a keen 
susceptibility to pain. There is probably no time of 
life at which pains are more intensely felt ; no time at 
which the whole man more " groaneth and travaileth 
in pain together." Young men are prone to extreme 
melancholy, — even to disgust with life. A young 
preacher will preach upon afflictions much more often 
than an old one ; a young poet will write more sadly ; 
a young philosopher will moralize, more gloomily. 
And this seems unreal sentiment, and is smiled at in 
after-years ; but it is real at the time, and perhaps is 
nearer the truth at all times than the contentedness 
of those who ridicule it. Youth, in fact, feels every- 
thing more keenly ; and, as far as the keenness of feel- 
ing contributes to its truth, the feeling, whether it is 
pain or pleasure, is so much the truer. But, in after- 
life, it is the happiness, not the suffering of youth that 
most often returns to the memory, and seems to gild 
all the past. 

The period of youth in the history of the world 
— when the human race was, as it were, put under 
the teaching of example — corresponds, of course, to 
the meeting-point of the Law and the Gospel. The 
second stage, therefore, in the education of man, was 
the presence of our Lord upon earth. Those few 
years of his divine presence seem, as it were, to bal- 
ance all the systems and creeds and worships which 
preceded, all the Church's life which has followed 
since. Saints had gone before, and saints have been 
given since ; great men and good men had lived 
among the heathen ; there were never, at any time, 
examples wanting to teach either the chosen people 
or any other. But the one Example of all examples 



28 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

came in the " fulness of time," just when the world 
was fitted to feel the power of his presence. Had 
his revelation been delayed until now, assuredly it 
would have been hard for us to recognize his divinity ; 
for the faculty of Faith has turned inwards, and can- 
not now accept any outer manifestations of the truth 
of God. Our vision of the Son of God is now aided 
by the eyes of the apostles ; and by that aid we can 
recognize the express image of the Father. But in 
this we are like men who are led through unknown 
woods by Indian guides, — we recognize the indica- 
tions by which the path was known, as soon as those 
indications are pointed out ; but we feel that it would 
have been quite vain for us to look for them unaided. 
We of course have, in our turn, counterbalancing 
advantages. If we have lost that freshness of faith 
which would be the first to say to a poor carpenter, 
" Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," 
yet we possess, in the greater cultivation of our relig- 
ious understanding, that which, perhaps, we ought 
not to be willing to give in exchange. The early 
Christians could recognize more readily than we the 
greatness and beauty of the Example set before 
them ; but it is not too much to say, that we know 
better than they the precise outlines of the truth. 
To every age is given by God its own proper gift. 
They had not the same clearness of understanding as 
we ; the same recognition, that it is God, and not the 
Devil, who rules the world ; the same power of dis- 
crimination between different kinds of truth. They 
had not the same calmness, or fixedness of conduct ; 
their faith was not so quiet, so little tempted to 
restless vehemence ; but they had a keenness of 
perception which we have not, and could see the 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 29 

immeasurable difference between our Lord and all 
other men as we could never have seen it. Had our 
Lord come later, he would have come to mankind 
already beginning to stiffen into the fixedness of ma- 
turity. The power of his life would not have sunk 
so deeply into the world's heart ; the truth of his 
divine nature would not have been recognized ; see- 
ing the Lord would not have been the title to apos- 
tleship. 

On the other hand, had our Lord come earlier, the 
world would not have been ready to receive him ; 
and the gospel, instead of being the religion of the 
human race, would have been the religion of the He- 
brews only. The otlier systems would have been too 
strong to be overthrown by the power of preaching. 
The need of a higher and purer teaching would not 
have been felt ; Christ would have seemed to the 
Gentiles the Jewish Messiah, not the Son of man. 
But he came in the " fulness of time," for which all 
history had been preparing, to which all history since 
has been looking back. Hence the first and largest 
place in the New Testament is assigned to his life 
four times told. This life we emphatically call the 
Gospel. If there is little herein to be technically 
called doctrine, yet here is the fountain of all inspira- 
tion. There is no Christian who would not rather 
part with all the rest of the Bible than with these 
four books. There is no part of God's word which 
the religious man more instinctively remembers. The 
Sermon on the Mount, the Parables and the Miracles, 
the Last Supper, the Mount of Olives, the Garden of 
Gethsemane, the Cross on Calvary, — these are the 
companions alike of infancy and of old age ; simple 
enough to be read with awe and wonder by the one, 



80 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

profound enough to open new depths of wisdom to 
the fullest experience of the other. 

Our Lord was the Example of mankind ; and there 
can be no other example in the same sense. But the 
whole period from the closing of the Old Testament 
to the close of the New was the period of the world's 
youth, — the age of examples ; and our Lord's pres- 
ence was not the only influence of that kind which 
has acted upon the human race. Three companions 
were appointed by Providence to give their society 
to this creature whom God was educating, — Greece, 
Eomc, and the Early Church. To these three man- 
kind has ever since looked back, and will ever here- 
after look back, with the same affection, the same 
lingering regret, with which age looks back to early 
manhood. In these three mankind remembers the 
brilliant social companion, whose wit and fancy sharp- 
ened the intellect and refined the imagination ; the 
bold and clever leader, with whom to dare was to do, 
and whose very name was a signal of success ; and 
the earnest, heavenly-minded friend, whose saintly 
aspect was a revelation in itself. 

Greece and Rome have not only given to us the 
fruits of their discipline, but the companionship of 
their bloom. The fruits of their discipHne would 
have passed into our possession, even if their memory 
had utterly perished ; and just as we know not the 
man who first discovered arithmetic, nor the man 
who first invented writing, — benefactors with whom 
no other captains of science can ever be compared, 
— so, too, it is probable that we inherit from many a 
race whose name we shall never hear again fruits of 
long training now forgotten. But Greece and Rome 
have given us more than any results of discipline in 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 31 

the never-dying memory of their fresh and youthful 
life. It is this, and not only the greatness or the 
genius of the classical writers, which makes their 
literature pre-eminent above all others. There have 
been great poets, great historians, great philosophers, 
in modern days. Greece can show few poets equal, 
none superior, to Shakespeare. Gibbon, in many re- 
spects, stands above all ancient historians. Bacon 
was as great a master of philosophy as Aristotle. 
Nor, again, are there wanting great writers, of times 
older, as well as of times later than the Greek ; as, 
for instance, the Hebrew prophets. But the classics 
possess a charm quite independent of genius. It is 
not their genius only which makes them attractive : 
it is the classic life, — the hfe of the people of that 
day ; it is the image, there only to be seen, of our 
highest natural powers in their freshest vigor ; it is 
the unattainable gTace of the prime of manhood ; it 
is the pervading sense of youthful beauty. Hence, 
while we have elsewhere great poems and great his- 
tories, we never find again that universal radiance of 
fresh life which makes even the most commonplace 
relics of classic days models for our highest art. The 
common workmen of those times breathed the atmos- 
phere of the gods. What are now the ornaments of 
our museums were then the every-day furniture of sit- 
ting and sleeping-rooms. In the great monuments 
of their literature we can taste this pure inspiration 
most largely ; but even the most commonplace frag- 
ments of a classic writer are steeped in the waters of 
the same fountain. Those who compare the moderns 
with the ancients, genius for genius, have no difficulty 
in claiming for the former equality, if not victory. 
But the issue is mistaken. To combine the highest 



32 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

powers of intellect with the freshness of youth was 
possible only once ; and that is the glory of the classic 
nations. The inspiration which is drawn by the man 
from the memory of those whom he loved and ad- 
mired in the spring-time of his life, is drawn by the 
world now from the study of Greece and Rome. The 
world goes back to its youth, in hopes to become 
young again ; and delights to dwell on the feats 
achieved by the companions of those days. Beneath 
whatever was wrong and foolish, it recognizes that 
beauty of a fresh nature which never ceases to de- 
light ; and the sins and vices of that joyous time are 
passed over with the levity with which men think of 
their young companions' follies. 

The Early Church stands as the example which has 
most influenced our religious life, as Greece and Rome 
have most influenced our political and intellectual life. 
We read the New Testament, not to find there forms 
of devotion, for there are few to be found ; nor laws of 
church-government, for there are hardly any ; nor 
creeds, for there are none ; nor doctrines logically 
stated, for there is no attempt at logical precision. 
The New Testament is almost entirely occupied with 
two lives, — the life of our Lord and the life of the 
Early Church. Among the Epistles, there are but two 
which seem, even at first sight, to be treatises for the 
future, instead of letters for the time, — the Epistle to 
the Romans and the Epistle to the Hebrews ; but 
even these, when closely examined, appear, like the 
rest, to be no more than the fruit of the current his- 
tory. That Early Church does not give us precepts, 
but an example. She says, *' Be ye followers of me, as 
I also am of Christ." This had never been said by 
Moses, nor by any of the prophets ; but the world 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 33 

was now grown old enough to be taught by seeing 
the lives of saints better than by hearing the words 
of prophets. When, afterwards. Christians needed 
creeds and liturgies, and forms of church-government, 
and systems of theology, they could not find them in 
the New Testament : they found there only the ma- 
terials out of which such needs could bB supplied ; 
but the combination and selection of those materials 
they had to provide for themselves. In fact, the work 
which the Early Church had to do was peculiar. Her 
circumstances were still more peculiar. Had she 
legislated peremptorily for posterity, her legislation 
must have been set aside ; as, mdeed, the prohibition 
to eat things strangled, and to eat blood, has been 
already set aside. But her example will live and 
teach forever. In her we learn what is meant by 
zeal, what by love of God, what by joy in the Holy 
Ghost, what by endurance for the sake of Christ. 
For the very purpose of giving us a pattern, the chief 
features in her character are, as it were, magnified 
into colossal proportions. Our saints must chiefly be 
the saints of domestic life, the brightness of whose 
light is visible to very few ; but their saintliness was 
forced into publicity, and its radiance illumines the 
earth. So on every page of the New Testament is 
written, "Go, and do thou likewise. Transplant into 
your modern life the same heavenly-mindedness, the 
same fervor of love, the same unshaken faith, the 
same devotion to your fellow-men." And to these 
pages, accordingly, the Church of our day turns for 
renewal of inspiration. We even busy ourselves in 
tracing the details of the early Christian life, and we 
love to find that any practice of ours comes down 
from apostolic times. This is an exaggeration. It is 

2* C 



34 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

not really following the Early Church to be servile 
copyists of her practices. We are not commanded to 
have all things in common because the church of 
Jerusalem once had, nor are we to make every sup- 
per a sacrament because the early Christians did so. 
To copy the Early Church is to do as she did, not what 
she did. Yet the very exaggeration is a testimony 
of the power which that Church has over us. We 
would fain imitate even her outward actions, as a step 
towards imitating her inner life. Her outward actions 
were not meant for our model. She, too, had her 
faults, — disorders, violent quarrels, licentious reckless- 
ness of opinion, in regard both to faith and practice. 
But these spots altogether disappear in the blaze of 
light which streams upon us when we look back to- 
wards her. Nay, we are impatient of being reminded 
that she had faults at all. So much does her youthful 
holiness surpass all that we can show, that he who 
can see her faults seems necessarily insensible to the 
brightness of her glory. There have been great saints 
since the days of the apostles ; holiness is as possible 
now as it was then : but the saintliness of that time 
had a peculiar beauty which we cannot copy, — a 
beauty not confined to the apostles or great leaders, 
but pervading the Avhole church. It is not what they 
endured, nor the virtues which they practised, that so 
dazzle us : it is the perfect simplicity of the religious 
life, the singleness of heart, the openness, the child- 
like earnestness. All else has been repeated since ; 
but tliis, never. And this makes the religious man's 
heart turn back with longing to that blessed time when 
the Lord's service was the highest of all delights, 
and every act of worship came fresh from the soul. 
If we compare degrees of devotion, it may be reck- 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 35 

oned something intrinsically nobler to serve God and 
love him now, when religion is colder than it was, 
and when we have not the aid of those thrilling, 
heart-stirring sympathies which blessed the Early 
Church. But even if our devotion be sometimes 
nobler in itself, yet theirs still remains the more beau- 
tiful, the more attractive. Ours may have its own 
place in the sight of God ; biit theirs remains the irre- 
sistible example which kindles all other hearts by its 
fire. 

It is nothing against the drift of this argument, 
that the three friends whose companionship is most 
deeply engraven on the memory of the world were no 
friends one to another. Tliis was the lot of mankind, 
as it is the lot of not a few men. Greece, the child 
of nature, had come to full maturity so early as to 
pass away before the other two appeared ; and Rome 
and the Early Church disliked each other. Yet that 
dislike makes little impression on us now. We never 
identify the Rome of our admiration with the Rome 
which persecuted the Christian : partly, indeed, be- 
cause the Rome that we admire was almost gone 
before the Church was founded ; but partly, too, be- 
cause we forget each of these while we are studying 
the other. We almost make two persons of Trajan, 
accordingly as we meet with him in sacred or profane 
history. So natural is it to forget, in after-life, the 
faulty side of young friends' characters. 

The susceptibility of youth to the impression of 
society wears off at last. The age of reflection be- 
gins. From the storehouse of his youthful experience 
the man begins to draw the principles of his life. 
The spirit, or conscience, comes to full strength, 
and assumes the throne intended for him in the soul. 



yo THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 

As an accredited judge, invested with full powers, he 
sits in the tribunal of our inner kingdom, decides up- 
on the past, and legislates upon the future, without 
appeal, except to himself. He decides, not by what 
is beautiful or noble or soul-inspiring, but by what 
is right. Gradually he frames his code of laws ; re- 
vising, adding, abrogating, as a wider and deeper 
experience gives him clearer light. He is the third 
great teacher, and the last. 

Now, the education by no means ceases when the 
spirit thus begins to lead the soul : the office of the 
spirit is, in fact, to guide us into truth, not to give 
truth. The youth who has settled down to his life's 
work makes a great mistake if he fancies, that, 
because he is no more under teachers and gov- 
ernors, his education is, therefore, at an end. It is 
only changed in form. He has much, very much, 
to learn, — more, perhaps, than all which he has yet 
learned ; and his new teacher will not give it to him 
all at once. The lesson of life is, in this respect, 
like the lessons whereby we learn any ordinary busi- 
ness. The barrister, wlio has filled his memory with 
legal forms and imbued his mind with their spirit, 
knows that the most valuable part of his education is 
yet to be obtained in attending the courts of law. 
The physician is not content with the theories of the 
lecture-room, nor with the experiments of the labora- 
tory, nor even with the attendance at the hospitals : 
he knows that independent practice, when he will be 
thrown upon his own resources, will open his eyes to 
much which at present he sees through a glass darkly. 
In every profession, after the principles are apparently 
mastered, there yet remains much to be learnt from 
the application of those principles to practice, — the 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 37 

only means by which we ever understand prmciples to 
the bottom. So, too, with the lesson which inckides 
all others, — the lesson of life. 

In this last stage of his progress, a man learns in 
various ways. First he learns unconsciously by the 
growth of his inner powers, and the secret but steady 
accumulation of experience. The fire of youth is 
toned down and sobered. The realities of life dissi- 
pate many dreams, clear up many prejudices, soften 
down many roughnesses. The difference between in- 
tention and action, between anticipating temptation 
and bearing it, between drawing pictures of holiness 
of nobleness and realizing them, between hopes of 
success and reality of achievement, is taught by many 
a painful and many an unexpected experience. In 
short, as the youth puts away childish things, so does 
the man put away youthful things. Secondly, the 
full-grown man learns by reflection. He looks in- 
wards, and not outwards only. He re-arranges the 
results of past experience, re-examines by the test 
of reality the principles supplied to him by books or 
conversation, reduces to intelligible and practical for- 
mulas what he has hitherto known as vague general 
rules. He not only generalizes, — youth will gener- 
alize with great rapidity, and often with great acute- 
ness, — but he learns to correct one generalization by 
another. He gradually learns to disentangle his own 
thoughts, so as not to be led into foolish inconsistency 
by want of clearness of purpose. He learns to distin- 
guish between momentary impulses and permanent 
determinations of character. He learns to know the 
limits of his own powers, moral and intellectual ; and 
by slow degrees, and with much reluctance, he learns 
to suspend his judgment, and to be content with 



38 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

ignorance where knowledge is beyond his reach. He 
learns to know himself and other men, and to distin- 
guish in some measure his own peculiarities from the 
leading features of humanity which he shares with 
all men. He learns to know both the worth and the 
worthlessness of the world's judgment and of his 
own. Thirdly, he learns much by mistakes, both by 
his own and by those of others. He often persists in 
a wrong cause till it is too late to mend what he has 
done, and he learns how to use it and how to bear it. 
His principles, or what he thought his principles, 
break down under him ; and he is forced to analj-ze 
them in order to discover what amount of truth they 
really contain. He comes upon new and quite unex- 
pected issues of what he has done or said, and he has 
to profit by such warnings as he receives. His er- 
rors often force him, as it were, to go back to school ; 
not now with the happy docility of a child, but with 
the chastened submission of a penitent. Or, more 
often still, his mistakes inflict a sharp chastisement, 
which teaches him a new lesson without much effort 
on his own part to learn. Lastly, he learns much by 
contradiction. The collision of society compels him 
to state his opinions clearly ; to defend them ; to mod- 
ify them when indefensible ; perhaps to surrender 
them altogether, consciously or unconsciously ; still 
more often to absorb them into larger and fuller 
thoughts, less forcible, but more comprehensive. The 
precision which is thus often forced upon him always 
seems to diminish something of the heartiness and 
power which belonged to more youthful instincts ; but 
he gains in directness of aim, and therefore in firmness 
of resolution. But the greatest of his gains is what 
seems a loss ; for he learns not to attempt the solution 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 39 

of insoluble problems, and to have no opinion at all 
on many points of the deepest interest. Usually this 
takes the form of an abandonment of speculation ; but 
it may rise to the level of a philosophical humility, 
which stops where it can advance no further, and con- 
fesses its own weakness in the presence of the myste- 
ries of life. 

But, throughout all this, it must not be supposed 
that he has no more to do, either with that law which 
guided his childhood, or with any other law of any 
kind. Since he is still a learner, he must learn on the 
one condition of all learning, — obedience to rules ; 
nat, indeed, blind obedience to rules not understood, 
but obedience to the rules of his own mind, — an 
obedience which he cannot throw off without de- 
scending below the childish level. He is free ; but 
freedom is not the opposite of obedience, but of re- 
straint. The freeman must obey, and obey as pre- 
cisely as the bondman ; and, if he has not acquired 
the habit of obedience, he is not fit to be free. The 
law, in fact, which God makes the standard of our 
conduct, may have one of two forms. It may be an 
external law ; a law which is in the hands of others, in 
the making, in the applying, in the enforcing of which 
we have no share ; a law which governs from the 
outside, compelling our will to bow, even though our 
understanding be unconvinced and unenlightened ; 
saying you must, and making no effort to make you 
feel that you ought ; appealing, not to your conscience, 
but to force or fear, and caring little whether you will- 
ingly agree or reluctantly submit. Or, again, the law 
may be an internal law ; a voice which speaks within 
the conscience, and carries the understanding along 
with it ; a law which treats us, not as slaves, but as 



40 THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 

friends, allowing us to know wliat our Lord doeth ; a 
law which bids us yield, not to blind fear or awe, but 
to the majesty of truth and justice ; a law which is 
not imposed on us by another power, but by our own 
enlightened will. Now, the first of these is the law 
which governs and educates the child ; the second, 
the law which governs and educates the man. The 
second is, in reality, the spirit of the first. It com- 
mands in a different way, but with a tone not one whit 
less peremptory ; and he only who can control all ap- 
petites and passions in obedience to it can reap the 
full harvest of the last and highest education. 

This need of law in the full maturity of life is so 
imperative, that if the requisite self-control be lost or 
impaired, or have never been sufficiently acquired, the 
man instinctively has recourse to a self-imposed dis- 
cipline if he desire to keep himself from falling. The 
Christian who has fallen into sinful habits often finds 
that he has no resource but to abstain from much that 
is harmless in itself, because he has associated it with 
evil. He takes monastic vows because the world has 
proved too much for him. He takes temperance 
pledges because he cannot resist the temptations of 
appetite. There are devils which can be cast out with 
a word : there are others which go not out but by 
(not prayer only, but) fasting. This is often the case 
with the late converted. They are compelled to ab- 
stain from, and sometimes they are induced to de- 
nounce, many pleasures and many enjoyments which 
they find unsuited to their spiritual health. The 
world and its enjoyments have been to them a source 
of perpetual temptation, and they cannot conceive 
any religious life within such a circle of evil. Some- 
times these men are truly spiritual enough and hum- 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 41 

ble enough to recognize that this discipline is not es- 
sential in itself, but only for them and for such as they. 
The discipline is then truly subordinate. It is an 
instrument in the hands of their conscience. They 
know what they are doing, and why they do it. But 
sometimes, if they are weak, this discipline assumes 
the shape of a regular external law. They look upon 
many harmless things, from which they have suffered 
mischief, as absolutely, not relatively, hurtful. They 
denounce what they cannot share without danger, as 
dangerous, not only for them, but for all mankind, 
and as evil in itself. They set up a conventional 
code of duty founded on their own experience, which 
they extend to all men. Even if they are educated 
enough to see that no conventional code is intellectu- 
ally tenable, yet they still maintain their system, and 
defend it, as not necessary in itself, but necessary for 
sinful men. The fact is, that a merciful Providence, 
in order to help such men, puts them back under the 
dominion of the law. They are not aware of it them- 
selves : men who are under the dominion of the law 
rarely are aware of it. But even if they could 
appeal to a revelation from heaven, they would still 
be under the law ; for a revelation speaking from 
without, and not from within, is an external law, and 
not a spirit. 

For the same reason, a strict, and even severe dis- 
cipline is needed for the cure of reprobates. Philan- 
thropists complain sometimes that this teaching ends 
only in making the man say, " The punishment of 
crime is what I cannot bear ; " not, " The wickedness 
of crime is what I will not do." But our nature is not 
all will, and the fear of punishment is very often the 
foundation on which we build the hatred of evil. No 



42 THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 

convert would look back with any other feeling than 
deep gratitude on a severity which had set free his 
spirit by chaining down his grosser appetites. It is 
true, that the teaching of mere discipline, if there be 
no other teaching, is useless. If you have only killed 
one selfish principle by another, you have done notli- 
ing ; but if, while thus killing one selfish principle by 
another, you have also succeeded in awaking the 
higher faculty and giving it free power of self-exertion, 
you have done everythhig. 

This return to the teaching of discipline in mature 
life is needed for the intellect even more than for the 
conduct. There are many men, who, though they 
pass from the teaching of the outer law to that of the 
inner in regard to their practical life, never emerge 
from the former in regard to their speculative. They 
do not think : they are contented to let others think 
for them, and to accept the results. How far the 
average of men are from having attained the power 
of free independent thought is shown by the stagger- 
ing and stumbling of their intellects when a com- 
pletely new subject of investigation tempts tliem to 
form a judgment of their own on a matter which 
they have not studied. In such cases, a really edu- 
cated intellect sees at once that no judgment is yet 
within its reach, and acquiesces in suspense : but 
the uneducated intellect hastens to account for the 
phenomenon ; to discover new laws of nature and 
new relations of truth ; to decide and predict, and 
perhaps to demand a remodelling of all previous 
knowledge. The discussions on table-turning, a few 
years ago, illustrated this want of intellects able to 
govern themselves. The whole analogy of physical 
science was not enough to induce that suspension of 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 43 

judgment which was effected in a week by the dictum 
of a known philosopher. 

There are, however, some men who really think for 
themselves ; but even tliey are sometimes obliged, 
especially if their speculations touch upon practical 
life, to put a temporary restraint upon their intellects. 
They refuse to speculate at all in directions where 
they cannot feel sure of preserving their own balance 
of mind. If the conclusions at which they seem likely 
to arrive are very strange, or very unlike the general 
analogy of truth, or carry important practical conse- 
quences, they will pause, and turn to some other sub- 
ject, and try whether, if they come back with fresh, 
minds, they still come to the same results. And this 
may go further, and they may find such speculations 
so bewildering and so unsatisfactory that they finally 
take refuge in a refusal to think any more on the par- 
ticular questions. They content themselves with so 
much of truth as they find necessary for their spiritual 
life ; and though perfectly aware that the wheat may 
be mixed with tares, they despair of rooting up the 
tares with safety to the wheat, and therefore let both 
grow together till the harvest. All this is justifiable 
in the same way that any self-discipline is justifiable ; 
that is, it is justifiable if really necessary. But, as is 
always the case with those who are under the law, 
such men are sometimes tempted to prescribe for 
others what they need for themselves, and to require 
that no others should speculate because they dare not. 
They not only refuse to think, and accept other men's 
thoughts, which is often quite right, but they elevate 
those into canons of faith for all men, which is not 
right. This blindness is, of course, wrong ; but in 
reality it is a blindness of the same kind as that with 



44 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

which the Hebrews clung to their law, — a blindness 
provided for them in mercy, to save their intellects 
from leading them into mischief. 

Some men, on the other hand, show their want of 
intellectual self-control by going back, not to the 
dominion of law, but to the still lower level of intel- 
lectual anarchy. They speculate without any founda- 
tion at all. They confound the internal consistency 
of some dream of their brains with tlie reality of in- 
dependent truth. They set up theories which have 
no other evidence than compatibility with the few 
facts that happen to be known, and forget that many 
other tlieories of equal claims might readily be in- 
vented. They are as little able to be content with 
having no judgment at all as those who accept judg- 
ments at second-hand. They never practically realize, 
that, when there is not enough evidence to justify a 
conclusion, it is wisdom to draw no conclusion. They 
are so eager for light, that they will rub their eyes in 
the dark, and take the resulting optical delusions for 
real flashes. They need intellectual discipline : but 
they have little chance of getting it ; for they have 
burst its bands. 

There is yet a further relation between the inner 
law of mature life and the outer law of childhood, 
which must be noticed ; and that is, that the outer 
law is often the best vehicle in which the inner law 
can be contained for the various purposes of life. 
The man remembers with affection, and keeps up 
with delight, the customs of the home of his child- 
hood ; tempted, perhaps, to over-estimate tlieir value, 
but, even when perfectly aware that they are no more 
than one form out of many which a well-ordered house- 
hold might adopt, preferring them because of his long 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 45 

familiarity, and because of the memories with which 
they are associated. So, too, truth often seems to 
him richer and fuller when expressed in some favorite 
phrase of his mother's or some maxim of his father's. 
He can give no better reason, very often, for much 
that he does every day of his life, than that his father 
did it before him ; and, provided the custom is not a 
bad one, the reason is valid. And he likes to go to 
the same church. He likes to use the same prayers. 
He likes to keep up the same festivities. There are 
limits to all this : but no man is quite free from the 
influence ; and it is in many cases, perhaps in most, 
an influence of the highest moral value. There is 
great value in the removal of many indifferent matters 
out of the region of discussion into that of precedent. 
There is greater value still in the link of sympathy 
which binds the present with the past, and fills old 
age with the fresh feelings of childhood. If truth 
sometimes suffers in form, it unquestionably gains 
much in power ; and, if its onward progress is re- 
tarded, it gains immeasurably in solidity and in its 
hold on men's hearts. 

Such is the last stas^e in the education of a human 
soul ; and similar, as far as it has yet gone, has been 
the last stage in the education of the human race. 
Of course, so full a comparison cannot be made in 
this instance as was possible in the two that pre- 
ceded it ; for we are still within the boundaries of 
this third period, and we cannot yet judge it as a 
whole. But, if the Christian Church be taken as the 
representative of mankind, it is easy to see that the 
general law observable in the development of the indi- 
vidual may also be found in the development of the 
Church. 



46 THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 

Since the days of the apostles, no further revelation 
has been granted ; nor has any other system of relig- 
ion sprung lip spontaneously within the limits which 
the Church has covered. No prophets have commu- 
nicated messages from Heaven. No infallible inspira- 
tion has guided any teacher or preacher. The claim 
of infallibility, stUl maintained by a portion of Chris- 
tendom, has been entirely given up by the more ad- 
vanced section. The Church, in tlie fullest sense, is 
left to herself to work out, by her natural faculties, 
the principles of her own action ; and whatever assist- 
ance she is to receive in doing so, is to be through 
those natural faculties, and not in spite of them or 
without them. 

From the very first, the Church commenced the 
task by determining her leading doctrines and tlie 
principles of her conduct. These were evolved, as 
principles usually are, partly by reflection on past ex- 
perience and by formularizing the thoughts embodied 
in the record of the Cluirch of the Apostles, partly 
by perpetual collision with every variety of opinion. 
This career of dogmatism in the Church was, in many 
ways, similar to the hasty generalizations of early 
manhood. The principle on which the controversies 
of those days were conducted is that of giving an 
answer to every imaginable question. It rarely seems 
to occur to the early controversialists, that there are 
questions which even the Church cannot solve, — prob- 
lems which not even revelation has brought within 
the reach of human faculties. That the decisions 
were right, on the whole, — that is, that they always 
embodied, if they did not always rightly define, tlie 
truth, — is proved by the permanent vitality of the 
Church as compared with the various heretical bodies 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 47 

that broke from her. But the fact that so vast a 
nTimber of the early decisions are practically obsolete, 
and that even many of the doctrinal statements are 
plainly unfitted for permanent use, is a proof that the 
Church was not capable, any more than a man is 
capable, of extracting at once all the truth and wis- 
dom contained in the teaching of the earlier periods. 
In fact, the Church of the Fathers claimed to do what 
not even the apostles had claimed ; namely, not ojily 
to teach the truth, but to clothe it in logical state- 
ments, and that not merely as opposed to then pre- 
vailing heresies (which was justifiable), but for all 
succeeding time. Yet this was, after all, only an 
exaggeration of the proper function of the time. 
Those logical statements were necessary ; and it be- 
longs to a later epoch to see " the law within the law," 
which absorbs such statements into something higher 
than themselves. 

Before this process can be said to have worked 
itself out, it was interrupted by a new phenomenon, 
demanding essentially different management. A flood 
of new and undisciplined races poured into Europe : 
on the one hand, supplying the Church with the 
vigor of fresh life to replace the effete materials of 
the old Eoman Empire ; and on the other, carrying 
her back to the childish stage, and necessitating a 
return to the dominion of outer law. The Church 
instinctively had recourse to the only means that 
would suit the case ; namely, a revival of Judaism. 
The Papacy of the Middle Ages, and the Papal hier- 
archy, with all its numberless ceremonies and appli- 
ances of external religion ; with its attention fixed 
upon deeds, and not on thoughts or feelings or pur- 
poses ; with its precise apportionment of punishments 



48 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

and purgatory, — was, in fact, neither more nor less 
than the old schoolmaster come back to bring some 
new scholars to Christ. Of course, this was not the 
conscious intention of the then rulers of the Church : 
they believed in their own ceremonies as much as 
any of the people at large. The return to the 
dominion of law was instinctive, not intentional ; 
but its object is now as evident as the object of the 
ancient Mosaic system. Nothing short of a real sys- 
tem of discipline, accepted as divine by all alike, 
could have tamed the German and Celtish nature 
into the self-control needed for a truly spiritual relig- 
ion. How could Clovis, at the head of his Franks, 
have made any right use of absolute freedom of con- 
science ? Nor was this a case in which the less 
disciplined race could have learned spirituality from 
the more disciplined : this may happen when the 
more disciplined is much the more vigorous of the 
two. But the exhausted Roman Empire had not such 
strength of life left within it. There was no alter- 
native but that all alike should be put under the law 
to learn the lesson of obedience. 

When the work was done, men began to discover 
that the law was no longer necessary ; and, of course, 
there was no reason why they should then discuss 
the question, Avhether it ever had been necessary. 
The time was come when it was fit to trust to the 
conscience as the supreme guide ; and the yoke of 
the mediasval discipline was shaken off by a contro- 
versy, which, in many respects, was a repetition of 
that between St. Paul and the Judaizers. But, as is 
always the case after a temporary return to the state 
of discipline, Christendom did not go back to the 
position or the duty from which she had been drawn 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 49 

by the influx of the Barbarian races. The human 
mind had not stood still through the ages of bondage, 
though its motions had been hidden. The Church's 
whole energy was taken up, in the first six centuries 
of her existence, in the creation of a theology. Since 
that time, it had been occupied in renewing, by self- 
discipline, the self-control which the sudden absorp- 
tion of the Barbarians had destroyed. At the Refor- 
mation, it might have seemed, at first, as if the study 
of theology were about to return ; but, in reality, an 
entirely new lesson commenced, — the lesson of tol- 
eration. Toleration is the very opposite of dogma- 
tism. It implies, in reality, a confession that there 
are insoluble problems upon which even revelation 
throws but little light. Its tendency is to modify the 
early dogmatism by substituting the spirit for the let- 
ter, and practical religion for precise definitions of 
truth. This lesson is certainly not yet fully learnt. 
Our toleration is at present too often timid, too often 
rash, — sometimes sacrificing valuable religious ele- 
ments, sometimes fearing its own plainest conclusions ; 
yet there can be no question that it is gaining on 
the minds of all educated men, whether Protestant or 
Roman Catholic, and is passing from them to be the 
common property of educated and uneducated alike. 
There are occasions when the spiritual anarchy which 
has 'necessarily followed the Reformation threatens, 
for a moment, to bring back some temporary bondage, 
like the Roman Catholic system ; but, on the whole, 
the steady progress of toleration is unmistakable. 
The mature mind of our race is beginning to modify 
and soften the hardness and severity of the principles 
which its early manhood had elevated into immutable 
statements of truth. Men are beginning to take a 



60 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

wider view than they did. Physical science, re- 
searches into history, a more thorough knowledge of 
the world they inhabit, have enlarged our philosophy 
beyond the limits which bounded that of the Church 
of the Fathers ; and all these have an influence, 
whether we will or no, on our determinations of re- 
ligious truth. There are found to be more things in 
heaven and earth than were dreamt of in the patristic 
theology. God's creation is a new book, to be read 
by the side of his revelation, and to be interpreted as 
coming from him. We can acknowledge the great 
value of the forms in which the first ages of the 
Church defined the truth, and yet refuse to be bound 
by them ; we can use them, and yet endeavor to go 
beyond them, just as they also went beyond the legacy 
which was left us by tlie apostles. 

In learning this new lesson, Christendom needed a 
firm spot on which she might stand ; and has found it 
in the Bible. Had the Bible been drawn up in pre- 
cise statements of faith or detailed precepts of con- 
duct, we should have had no alternative but either 
permanent subjection to an outer law, or loss of the 
highest instrument of self-education. But the Bible, 
from its very form, is exactly adapted to our present 
want. It is a history : even the doctrinal parts of it 
are cast in a historical form, and are best studied by 
considering them as records of the time at which 
they were written, and as conveying to us the high- 
est and greatest religious life of that time. Henco 
we use the Bible, — some consciously, some uncon- 
sciously, — not to override, but to evoke, the voice of 
conscience. When conscience and the Bible appear 
to differ, the pious Christian immediately concludes 
that he has not really understood the Bible. Hence, 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 51 

too, while the interpretation of the Bible varies 
slightly from age to age, it varies always in one 
direction. The schoolmen found purgatory in it. 
Later students found enough to condemn Galileo. 
Not long ago, it would have been held to condemn 
geology ; and there are still many who so interpret it. 
The current is all one way : it evidently points to 
the identification of the Bible with the voice of con- 
science. The Bible, in fact, is hindered by its form 
from exercising a despotism over the human spirit : if 
it could do that, it would become an outer law at 
once ; but its form is so admirably adapted to our 
need, that it wins from us all the reverence of a 
supreme authority, and yet imposes on us no yoke of 
subjection. This it does by virtue of the principle 
of private judgment, which puts conscience between 
us and the Bible ; making conscience the supreme 
interpreter, whom it may be a duty to enlighten, but 
whom it can never be a duty to disobey. 

This recurrence to the Bible as the great authority 
has been accompanied by a strong inclination, com- 
mon to all Protestant countries, to go back in every 
detail of life to the practices of early times ; chiefly, 
no doubt, because such a revival of primitive prac- 
tices, wherever possible, is the greatest help to enter- 
ing into the very essence, and imbibing the spirit, of 
the days when the Bible was written. So, too, the 
observance of the Sunday has a stronger hold on 
the minds of all religious men because it penetrates 
the whole texture of the Old Testament. The insti- 
tution is so admirable, indeed so necessary in itself, 
that, without this hold, it would deserve its present 
position ; but nothing but its prominent position in 
the Bible would have made it, what it now is, the one 



62 THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 

ordinance wliich all Christendom alike agrees in keep- 
ing. In such an observance, men feel that they are, 
so far, living a scriptural life ; and have come, as it 
were, a step nearer to the inner power of the book 
from which they expect to learn their highest lessons. 
Some, indeed, treat it as enjoined by an absolutely 
binding decree, and thus at once put themselves 
under a law. But, short of that, those who defend 
it only by arguments of Christian expediency are 
yet compelled to acknowledge, that those arguments 
are so strong, that it would be difficult to imagine 
a higher authority for any ceremonial institution ; 
and among those arguments, one of the foremost is 
the sympathy which the institution fosters between 
the student of the Bible and the book which he 
studies. 

This tendency to go back to the childhood and 
youth of the world has, of course, retarded the 
acquisition of that toleration which is the chief 
philosophical and religious lesson of modern days. 
Unquestionably, as bigoted a spirit has often been 
shown in defence of some practice for which tlie sanc- 
tion of the Bible had been claimed, as, before the Ref- 
ormation, in defence of the decrees of the Church. 
But no lesson is well learned all at once. To learn 
toleration well and really ; to let it become, not a 
philosophical tenet, but a practical principle ; to join 
it with real religiousness of life and character, — it 
is absolutely necessary that it should break in upon 
the mind by slow and steady degrees, and that at 
every point its right to go further should be disputed, 
and so forced to logical proof : for it is only by virtue 
of the opposition which it has surmounted that any 
truth can stand in the human mind. The strongest 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 63 

argument in favor of tolerating all opinions is, that 
our conviction of the truth of an opinion is worthless 
unless it has established itself in spite of the most 
strenuous resistance, and is still prepared to over- 
come the same resistance if necessary. Toleration 
itself is no exception to the universal law ; and those 
who must regret the slow progress by which it wuis 
its way, may remember that this slowness makes the 
final victory the more certain and complete. Nor is 
that all. The toleration thus obtained is different in 
kind from what it would otherwise have been. It is 
not only stronger ; it is richer and fuller : for the 
slowness of its progress gives time to disentangle 
from dogmatism the really valuable principles and 
sentiments that have been mixed up and intwined in 
it, and to unite toleration, not with indifference and 
worldliness, but with spiritual truth, and religious- 
ness of life. 

Even the perverted use of the Bible has, therefore, 
not been without certain great advantages. And, 
meanwhile, how utterly impossible it would be in tho 
manhood of the world to imagine any other instructor 
of mankind ! And, for that reason, every day makes 
it more and more evident that the thorough study of 
the Bible, the investigation of what it teaches and 
what it does not teach, the determination of the limits 
of what we mean by its inspiration, the determination 
of the degree of authority to be ascribed to the differ- 
ent books (if any degrees are to be admitted), must 
take the lead of all other studies. He is guilty of 
high treason against the faith who fears the result of 
any investigation, whether philosophical or scientific 
or historical. And, therefore, nothing should be more 
welcome than the extension of knowledge of any and 



54 THE EDUCATION OF THE WOELD. 

every kind ; for every increase in our accumulations 
of knowledge throws fresh light upon these, the real 
problems of our day. If geology proves to us that 
we must not interpret the first chapters of Genesis 
literally ; if historical investigation shall show us, 
that inspiration, however it may protect the doctrine, 
yet was not empowered to protect the narrative of 
the inspired writers from occasional inaccuracy ; if 
careful criticism shall prove that there have been 
occasionally interpolations and forgeries in that book, 
as m many others, — the results should still be wel- 
come. Even the mistakes of careful and reverent 
students are more valuable now than truth held in 
unthinking acquiescence. The substance of the teach- 
ing which we derive from the Bible will not really be 
affected by anything of this sort ; while its hold 
upon the minds of believers, and its power to stir 
the depths of the spirit of man, however much weak- 
ened at first, must be immeasurably strengthened in 
the end by clearing away any blunders which may 
have been fastened on it by human interpretation. 

The immediate work of our day is the study of the 
Bible. Other studies will act upon the progress of 
mankind by acting tlirough and upon this ; for while 
a few highly educated men here and there, who have 
given their minds to special pursuits, may think the 
study of the Bible a thing of the past, yet assuredly, 
if their science is to have its effect upon men in the 
mass, it must be by affecting their moral and relig- 
ious convictions : in no other way have men been, or 
can men be, deeply and permanently changed. But 
though this study must be for the present and for 
some time, the centre of all studies, there is mean- 
while no study of whatever kind which will not have 



THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 65 

its share in the general effect. At this time, in the 
maturity of mankind, as with each man in the matu- 
rity of his powers, the great lever which moves the 
world is knowledge ; the great force is the intellect. 
St. Paul has told us, " that, though in malice we must 
be children, in understanding we ought to be men ; " 
and this saying of his has the widest range. Not 
only in the understanding of religious truth, but in 
all exercise of the intellectual powers, we have no 
right to stop short of any limit but that which nature 
— that is, the decree of the Creator — has imposed 
on us. In fact, no knowledge can be without its 
effect on religious convictions ; for if not capable of 
throwing direct light on some spiritual questions, yet, 
in its acquisition, knowledge invariably throws light 
on the process by which it is to be or has been ac- 
quired, and thus affects all other knowledge of every 
kind. 

If we have made mistakes, careful study may teach 
us better ; if we have quarrelled about words, the 
enlightenment of the understanding is the best means 
to sliow us our folly ; if we have vainly puzzled our 
intellects with subjects beyond human cognizance, 
better knowledge of ourselves will help us to be 
humbler. Life, indeed, is higher than all else ; and 
no service that man can render to his fellows is to be 
compared with the heavenly power of a life of holi- 
ness. But next to that must be ranked whatever 
tends to make men think clearly and judge correctly. 
So valuable, even above all tilings (excepting only 
godhness), is clear thought, that the labors of the 
statesman are far below those of the philosopher in 
duration, in power, and in beneficial results. Thought 



66 THE EDUCATION OF THE WORLD. 

is now higher than action, unless action be inspired 
with the very breath of heaven : for we are now men, 
governed by principles, if governed at all ; and cannot 
rely any longer on the impulses of youth or the disci- 
pline of childhood. 



BUNSEN^S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 

By ROWLAND WILLIAMS, D.D. 

WHEN geologists began to ask whether changes 
in the earth's structure might be explained by 
causes still in operation, they did not disprove the 
possibility of great convulsions, but they lessened the 
necessity for imagining them. So, if a theologian has 
his eyes opened to the Divine Energy as continuous 
and omnipresent, he lessens the sharp contrast of 
epochs in revelation, but need not assume that the 
stream has never varied in its flow. Devotion raises 
time present into the sacredness of the past ; while 
criticism reduces the strangeness of the past into 
harmony with the present. Faith and prayer (and 
great marvels answering to them) do not pass away ; 
but, in prolonging their range as a whole, we make 
their parts less exceptional. We hardly discern the 
truth, for which they are anxious, until we distinguish 
it from associations accidental to their domain. The 
truth itself may have been apprehended in various 
degrees by servants of God, of old, as now. Instead 
of, with Tertullian, "what was first is truest," we 
may say, What comes of God is true : and he is not 
only afar, but nigh at hand ; though his mind is not 
changed. 

3* 



58 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 

Questions of miraculous interference do not turn 
merely upon our conceptions of pliysical law, as un- 
broken, or of the Divine Will, as all-pervading ; but 
they include inquiries into evidence, and must abide 
by verdicts on the age of records. Nor should the 
distinction between poetry and prose, and the possi- 
bility of imagination's allying itself with affection, 
be overlooked. We cannot encourage a remorseless 
criticism of Gentile histories, and escape its conta- 
gion when we approach Hebrew annals ; nor acknowl- 
edge a Providence in Jewry, without owning that it 
may have comprehended sanctities elsewhere. But 
the moment we examine fairly the religions of India 
and of Aral)ia, or even those of primeval Hellas and 
Latium, we find they appealed to the better side of 
our nature ; and their essential strength lay in the 
elements of good which they contained, rather than 
in any satanic corruption. 

Thus considerations, religious and moral, no less 
than scientific and critical, have, where discussion 
was free, widened the idea of revelation for the old 
world, and deepened it for ourselves : not removing 
the footsteps of the Eternal from Palestine, but tracing 
them on other shores ; and not making the saints of 
old, orphans, but ourselves partakers of their sonship. 
Conscience would not lose by exchanging that repres- 
sive idea of revelation, which is put over against it as 
an adversary, for one to which the echo of its best 
instincts should be the witness. The moral constit- 
uents of our nature, so often contrasted with revelation, 
should rather be considered parts of its instrumental- 
ity. Those cases in which we accept the miracle for 
the sake of the moral lesson prove the ethical element 
to be the more fundamental. We see this more cleai'ly 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 59 

if we imagine a miracle of cruelty wrought (as by 
Antichrist) for immoral ends ; for then only the tech- 
nically miraculous has its value isolated : whereas, by 
appealing to good "works" (however wonderful) for 
his witness, Christ has taught us to have faith mainly 
in goodness. This is too much overlooked by some 
apologists. But there is hardly any greater question 
than whether history shows Almighty God to have 
trained mankind by a faith which has reason and con- 
science for its kindred, or by one to whose miraculous 
tests their pride must bow : that is, whether his Holy 
Spirit has acted through the channels which his prov- 
idence ordained ; or whether it has departed from 
these so signally that comparative mistrust of them 
ever afterwards becomes a duty. The first alterna- 
tive, though invidiously termed philosophical, is that 
to which free nations and evangelical thinkers tend : 
the second has a greater show of religion, but alhes 
itself naturally with priestcraft or formalism, and not 
rarely with corruptness of administration or of life. 

In this issue converge many questions anciently 
stirred, but recurring in our daylight with almost 
uniform* accession of strength to the liberal side. 
Such questions turn chiefly on the law of growth, 
traceable throughout the Bible as in the world ; and 
partly on science or historical inquiry : but no less on 
the deeper revelations of the New Testament, as com- 
pared to those of the Old. If we are to retain the 



* It is very remarkable that, amidst all our biblical illustration from re- 
cent travellers, Layard, Rawlinson, Robinson, Stanley, &c., no single point 
has been discovered to tell in favor of an irrational supernaturalism ; 
whereas numerous discoveries have confirmed the more liberal (not to say, 
rationalizing) criticism which traces revelation historically within the sphere 
of nature and humanity. Such is the moral, both of the Assyrian discov- 
eries and of all travels in the East, as well as the verdict of philologers at 
home. Mr. G. Rawlinson's proof of this is stronger, because undesigned. 



60 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 

old Anglican foundations of research and fair state- 
ment, we must revise some of the decisions provision- 
ally given upon imperfect evidence : or, if we shrink 
from doing so, we must abdicate our ancient claim to 
build upon the truth ; and our retreat will be either 
to Rome, as some of our lost ones have consistently 
seen, or to some form, equally evil, of darkness vol- 
untary. The attitude of too many English scholars 
before the last monster out of the deep is that of the 
degenerate senators before Tiberius. They stand, 
balancing terror against mutual shame. Even with 
those in our universities who no longer repeat fully 
the required shibboleths, the explicitness of truth is 
rare. He who assents most, committing liimself least 
to baseness, is reckoned wisest. 

Bunsen's enduring glory is, neither to have paltered 
with his conscience nor shrunk from the difficulties 
of the problem, but to have brought a vast erudition, 
in the light of a Christian conscience, to unroll tangled 
records ; tracing frankly the Spirit of God elsewhere, 
but honoring chiefly the traditions of His Hebrew 
sanctuary. No living author's works could furnish 
so pregnant a text for a discourse on biblical criti- 
cism. Passing over some specialties of Lutheranism, 
we may meet in the field of research which is common 
to scholars ; while, even here, the sympathy which 
justifies respectful exposition need not imply entire 
agreement. 

In the great work upon Egypt,* the later volumes 
of which are now appearing in English, we do not 
find that picture of home-life which meets us in the 
pages of our countryman, Sir G. Wilkinson. The 

* Egypt's Place in Universal History, by Christian C, J. Bunsen, &c. 
London. 1848, vol. i. ; 1854, vol. ii. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 6J 

interest for robust scholars is not less, in the fruitful 
comparison of the oldest traditions of our race, and in 
the giant shapes of ancient empires, which flit like 
dim shadows, evoked by a master's hand. But for 
those who seek chiefly results, there is something wea- 
risome in the elaborate discussion of authorities ; and, 
it must be confessed, the German refinement of method 
has all the efiect of confusion. To give details here 
is impossible (though the more any one scrutinizes 
them, the more substantial he will find them) ; and 
this sketch must combine suggestions, which the 
author has scattered strangely apart, and sometimes 
repeated without perfect consistency. He dwells 
largely upon Herodotus, Eratosthenes, and their suc- 
cessors, from Champollion and Young to Lepsius. 
Especially the dynastic records of the Ptolemaic priest 
Manetho * are compared with the accounts of the stone 
monuments. The result, if we can receive it, is to 
vindicate for the civilized kingdom of Egypt, from 
Menes downward, an antiquity of nearly four thousand 
years before Christ. There is no point in which ar- 
chagologists of all shades were so nearly unanimous as 
in the belief that our biblical chronology was too nar- 
row in its Hmits ; and the enlargement of our views, 
deduced from Egyptian records, is extended by our 
author's reasonings on the development of commerce 
and government, and still more of languages, and 
physical features of race. He could not have vindi- 

* See an account of him and his tables in the Byzantine Syncellus, pp. 
72-145, vol. i. ed. Dind., in the Corpus Historioe Byaantinje;' Bonn. 1829. 
But with this is to be compared the Annenian version of Eusebius's Chro- 
nology, discovered by Cardinal ]\Iai. The text, the interpretation, and the 
historical fidelity, are all conti'overted. Baron Bunsen's treatment of them 
deserves the provisional acceptance due to elaborate i-esearch, with no slight 
concuiTence of probabilities; and, if it should not iiltimately win a favor- 
able verdict from Egyptologers, no one who summarily rejects it as arbitrary 
or impossible can have a right to be on the jury. 



62 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 

cated the unity of mankind if he had not asked for a 
vast extension of time, whether his petition of twenty 
thousand years be granted or not. The mention of 
such a term may appear monstrous to those who 
regard six thousand years as a part of revelation. 
Yet it is easier to throw doubt on some of the argu- 
ments than to show that the conclusion in favor of a 
vast length is improbable. If pottery in a river's mud 
proves little, its tendency may agree with that of the 
discovery of very ancient pre-historic remains in many 
parts of the world. Again, how many years are 
needed to develop modern French out of Latin, and 
Latin itself out of its original crude forms ? How un- 
like is English to Welsh, and Greek to Sanscrit ! — yet 
all indubitably of one family of languages. What 
years were required to create the existing divergence 
of members of this family ! How many more for other 
families, separated by a wide gulf from this, yet re- 
taining traces of a primeval aboriginal affinity, to 
have developed themselves, either in priority or col- 
laterally ! The same consonantal roots, appearing 
either as verbs inflected with great variety of gram- 
matical form or as nouns with case-endings in some 
languages, and with none in others, plead, as con- 
vincingly as the succession of strata in geology, for 
enormous lapses of time. When, again, we have 
traced our Gaelic and our Sanscrit to their inferential 
pre-Hellenic stem, and when reason has convinced us 
that the Semitic languages, which had as distinct an 
individuality four thousand years ago as they have 
now, require a cradle of larger dimensions than Arch- 
bishop Ussher's chronology, what further effort is not 
forced upon our imagination, if we would guess the 
measure of the dim background in which the Mongo- 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEARCHES. 63 

lian and Egyptian languages, older probably tlian the 
Hebrew, became fixed, growing early into tlie type 
which they retahi ? Do we see an historical area of 
nations and languages extending itself over nearly 
ten thousand years ? and can we imagine less than 
another ten thousand, during which the possibilities 
of these things took body and form ? Questions of 
this kind require from most of us a special training 
for each ; but Baron Bunsen revels in them, and his 
theories are at least suggestive. He shows what 
Egypt had in common with that primeval Asiatic 
stock, represented by Ham, out of which, as raw 
material, he conceives the divergent families, termed 
Indo-European * and Semitic (or the kindreds of 
Europe and of Palestine), to have been later devel- 
oped. Nimrod is considered as the biblical represen- 
tative of the earlier stock, whose ruder language is 
continued, by affiliation or by analogy, in the Mongo- 
lian races of Asia and in the Negroes of Africa. 

The traditions of Babylon, Sidon, Assyria, and Iran, 
are brought by our author to illustrate and confirm, 
though to modify our interpretation of. Genesis. It 
is strange how nearly those ancient cosmogonies f 
approach what may be termed the philosophy of Mo- 
ses, while they fall short in what Longinus called 
his " worthy conception of the divinity." Our Deluge 
takes its place among geological phenomena ; no longer 
a disturbance of law from which science shrinks, but a 



* The common term was Indo-Germanic. Dr. Prichai-d, on bringing the 
Gael and Cymry into the same family, required the wider terra Indo- 
European. Historical reasons, chiefly in connection with Sanscrit, are 
bringing the term Aryan, or Aryas, into fashion. We may adopt which- 
ever is intelligible, without excluding, perhaps, a Turanian or African ele- 
ment surviving in South Wales. Tiu-anian means nearly Mongolian. 

t Aegypten's SteUe m der Weltgeschichte, pp. 186 - 400 ; B. v. 1 - 3. Go- 
tha, 1856, 



64 BUNSEN'S BIBUCAL RESEAECHES. 

prolonged play of the forces of fire and water, ren- 
dering the primeval regions of North Asia uninhabit- 
able, and urging the nations to - new abodes. We 
learn approximately its antiquity, and infer limitation 
in its range, from finding it recorded in the traditions 
of Iran and Palestine (or of Japhet and Shem), but 
unknown to the Egyptians and Mongolians, who left 
earlier the cradle of mankind. In the half-ideal, half- 
traditional notices * of the beginnings of our race, 
compiled in Genesis, we are bid notice the combina- 
tion of documents, and the recurrence of barely con- 
sistent genealogies. As the man Adam begets Cain, 
the man Enos begets Cainan. Jared and Irad, Methu- 
selah and Methusael, are similarly compared. Seth, 
like El, is an old deity's appellation ; and Man was the 
son of Seth in one record, as Adam was the son of 
God in the other. One could wish the puzzling cir- 
cumstance, that the etymology of some of the earlier 
names seems strained to suit the present form of the 
narrative had been explained. That our author would 
not shrink from noticing this, is shown by the firmness 
with which he relegates the long lives of the first 
patriarchs to the domain of legend or of symbolical 
cycle. He reasonably conceives that the historical 
portion begins with Abraham, where the lives become 
natural, and information was nearer. A sceptical crit- 
icism might, indeed, ask by what right he assumes 
that the moral dimensions of our spiritual heroes can- 
not have been idealized by tradition, as he admits to 
have been the case with physical events and with 
chronology rounded into epical shape ; but the first 
principles of his philosophy, which fixes on personality 

* Aegypten's Stelle, &c., B. v. 4, 5, pp. 50 - 142. Gotha, 1857. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEAKCHES. 65" 

(or what we might call force of character) as the 
great organ of divine manifestation in the world, and 
his entire method of handling the Bible, lead him to 
insist on the genuineness, and to magnify the force, of 
spiritual ideas, and of the men who exemplified them. 
Hence, on the side of religion, he does not intention- 
ally violate that reverence with which evangelical 
thinkers view the fathers of our faith. To Abraham 
and Moses, Elijah and Jeremiah, he renders grateful 
honor. Even in archseology, his scepticism does not 
outrun the suspicions often betrayed in our popular 
mind ; and he limits while he confirms these, by show- 
ing how far they have ground. But, as he says with 
quaint strength, " there is no chronological element 
in revelation." Without borrowing the fifteen cen- 
turies which the Greek Church and the Septuagint 
would lend us, we see, from comparing the Bible with 
the Egyptian records and with itself, that our com- 
mon dates are wrong ; though it is not so easy to say 
how they should be rectified. The idea of bringing 
Abraham into Egypt as early as 2876 B. C. is one of 
our author's most doubtful points, and may seem 
hardly tenable. But he wanted time for the growth 
of Jacob's family into a people of two millions ; and 
he felt bound to place Joseph under a native Pharaoh, 
therefore, before the shepherd-kings. He also con- 
tends that Abraham's horizon in Asia is antecedent to 
the first Median conquest of Babylon in 2234. A 
famine, conveniently mentioned under the twelfth 
dynasty of Egypt, completes his proof. Sesortosis, 
therefore, is the Pharaoh to whom Joseph was min- 
ister ; the stay of the Israelites in Egypt is extended 
to fourteen centuries ; and the date 215 represents 
the time of oppression. Some of these details are 

E 



66 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEAECHES. 

sufficiently doubtful to afford ground of attack to 
writers whose real quarrel is with our author's bibli- 
cal research, and its more certain, but not therefore 
more welcome, conclusions. It is easier to follow him 
implicitly when he leads us, in virtue of an overwhelm- 
ing concurrence of Egyptian records and of all the 
probabilities of the case, to place the exodus as late 
as 1320 or 1314. The event is more natural in Egypt's 
decline under Menephthah, the exiled son of the great 
Ramses, than amidst the splendor of the eighteenth 
dynasty. It cannot well have been earlier, or the 
Book of Judges must have mentioned the conquest of 
Canaan by Ramses ; nor later, for then Joshua would 
come in collision with the new empire of Ninus and 
Semiramis. But Manetho places under Menephthah 
what seems the Egyptian version of the event ; and 
the year 1314, one of our alternatives, is the date 
assigned it by Jewish tradition. Not only is the his- 
torical reality of the exodus thus vindicated against 
the dreams of the Drummonds and the Volneys, but a 
new interest is given it by its connection with the 
rise and fall of great empires. We can understand 
how the ruin on which Ninus rose made room in Ca- 
naan for the Israelites, and how they fell again under 
the satraps of the new empire, who appear in the 
Book of Judges as kings of the provinces. Only, if 
we accept the confirmation, we must take all its parts. 
Manetho makes the conquerors before whom Meneph- 
thah retreats into Ethiopia Syrian shepherds ; and 
gives the human side of an invasion, or war of libera- 
tion.* Baron Bunsen notices the " high hand " with 

* vofiov edero fir]T€ npocrKVuelu Qeovs • • • avudnTecroai oe firjoevi 
TtX^j/ t<ov (tvvco fioa fj.€ voi V ' avTOS 8e . . . fTre^yj/e Trpe a^eis npos 
Tovs VTTQ TeOfMoJcrecos dneXaOtvras noifihas . . . Ka\ rj^iov o-vvem- 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEARCHES. 67 

which Jehovah led forth his people, the spoiling of 
the Egyptians, and the lingering in the peninsula, as 
signs, even in the Bible, of a struggle conducted by 
human means. Thus, as the pestilence of the Book 
of Kings becomes in Chronicles the more visible an- 
gel ; so the avenger who slew the first-born may have 
been the Bedouin host, akin nearly to Jethro, and 
more remotely to Israel. 

So, in the passage of the Red Sea, the description 
may be interpreted with the latitude of poetry ; 
though, as it is not affirmed that Pharaoh was 
drowned, it is no serious objection that Egyptian au- 
thorities continue the reign of Menephthah later. A 
greater difficulty is, that we find but three centuries 
thus left us from the exodus to Solomon's Temple. 
Yet less stress will be laid on this by whoever notices 
how the numbers in the Book of Judges proceed by 
the Eastern round number of forty, what traces the 
whole book bears of embodying history in its most 
popular form, and how naturally St. Paul or St. Ste- 
phen would speak after received accounts. 

It is not the importance severally, but the continual 
recurrence of such difficulties, which bears with ever- 
growing induction upon the question, whether the 
Pentateuch is of one age and hand, and whether sub- 
sequent books are contemporary with the events, or 
whether the whole literature grew like a tree rooted 
in the varying thoughts of successive generations ; 
and whether traces of editorship, if not of composi- 
tion, between the ages of Solomon and Hezekiah, are 
manifest to whoever will recognize them. Baron 
Bunsen finds himself compelled to adopt the alter- 

(TTpareveiv, kt.\. Manetho, apud Jos. c. Apion. The whole passage 
has the stamp of genuine history. 



68 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEAECHES. 

native of gradual growth. He makes the Pentateuch 
Mosaic, as indicating the mind and embodying the 
developed system of Moses, rather than as written by 
the great lawgiver's hand. Numerous fragments of 
genealogy, of chronicle, and of spiritual song, go up 
to a high antiquity, but are embedded in a crust of 
later narrative, the allusions of which betray at least 
a time when kings were established in Israel. Hence 
the idea of composition out of older materials must 
be admitted ; and it may, in some cases, be conceived 
that the compiler's point of view differed from that of 
the older pieces, which yet he faithfully preserved. 
If, the more any one scrutinizes the sacred text, the 
more he finds himself impelled to these or like con- 
clusions respecting it, the accident of such having 
been alleged by men more critical than devout should 
not make Christians shrink from them. We need not 
fear that what God has permitted to be true in his- 
tory can be at war with the faith in himself taught us 
by his Son. 

As, in his " Egypt," our author sifts the historical 
date of the Bible, so, in his " Gott in der Geschichte," * 
he expounds its directly religious element. Lament- 
ing, like Pascal, the wretchedness of our feverish be- 
ing, when estranged from its eternal stay, he traces, 
as a countryman of Hegel, the Divine Thought bring- 
ing order out of confusion. Unlike the despairing 
school, who forbid us trust in God or in conscience, 
unless we kill our souls with literalism, he finds salva- 
tion for men and States, only in becoming acquainted 
with the Author of our life, by whose reason the world 
stands fast, whose stamp we bear in our forethought, 

* Gott in der Geschichte (i. e. the Divine Government in History). Books 
i. and ii. Leipzig, 1857. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 69 

and whose voice our conscience echoes. In the Bi- 
ble, as an expression of devout reason, and therefore 
to be read with reason in freedom, he finds record of 
the spiritual giants whose experience generated the 
religious atmosphere we breathe. For, as in law and 
literature, so m religion, we are debtors to our ances- 
tors : but their life must find in us a kindred appre- 
hension, else it would not quicken ; and we must 
give back what we have received, or perish by unfaith- 
fulness to our trust. Abraham, the friend of God; 
Moses, the inspired patriot ; Elijah, the preacher of 
the still small voice ; and Jeremiah, the foreseer of a 
law written on the conscience, — are not ancestors of 
Pharisees who inherit their flesh and name, so much 
as of kindred spirits who put trust in a righteous God 
above offerings of blood ; who build up free nations by- 
wisdom ; who speak truth in simplicity, though four 
hundred priests cry out for falsehood ; and who make 
self-examination before the Searcher of hearts more 
sacred than the confessional. When the fierce ritual 
of Syria, with the awe of a Divine voice, bade Abra- 
ham slay his son, he did not reflect that he had no 
perfect theory of the absolute to justify him in de- 
parting from traditional revelation, but trusted that 
the Father, whose voice from heaven he heard at 
heart, was better pleased with mercy than with sacri- 
fice ; and this trust was his righteousness. Its seed 
was sown from heaven ; but it grew in the soil of an 
honest and good heart. So in each case we trace 
principles of reason and right, to which our heart 
perpetually responds, and our response to which is a 
truer sign of faith than such deference to a supposed 
external authority as would quench these principles 
themselves. 



70 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEAECHES. 

It may be thought that Baron Bunsen ignores too 
peremptorily the sacerdotal element in the Bible, for- 
getting how it moulded the form of the history. He 
certainly separates the Mosaic institutions from Egyp- 
tian affinity more than our Spencer and Warburton 
would permit ; more, it seems, than Hengstenberg 
considers necessary. But the distinctively Mosaic 
is, with him, not the ritual, but the spiritual, which 
generated the other, but was overlaid by it. Moses, 
he thinks, would gladly have founded a free religious 
society, in which the primitive tables, written by the 
Divine finger on man's heart, should have been law ; 
but the rudeness or hardness of his people's heart 
compelled him to a sacerdotal system and formal 
tablets of stone. In favor of this view, it may be 
remarked, that the tone of some passages in Exodus 
appears less sacerdotal than that of later books in the 
Pentateuch. But, be this as it may, the truly Mosaic 
(according to our author) is not the Judaic, but the 
essentially human ; and it is not the Semitic form, 
often divergent from our modes of conception, but the 
eternal truths of a righteous God, and of the spiritual 
sacrifices with which he is pleased, that we ought to 
recognize as most characteristic of the Bible ; and 
these truths the same Spirit which spoke of old, speaks, 
through all variety of phrase, in ourselves. 

That 'there was a Bible before our Bible, and that 
some of our present books — as certainly Genesis and 
Joshua, and perhaps Job, Jonah, Daniel — are expanded 
from simpler elements, is indicated in the book before 
us rather than proved as it might be. Fuller details 
may be expected in the course of the revised " Bible 
for the People,"* — that grand enterprise, of which 

* Bibel-werk fiir die Gemeinde. I. and 11. Leipzig, 1858. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 71 

three parts have now appeared. So far as it has 
gone, some amended renderings have interest, but are 
less important than the survey of the whole subject 
in the Litroduction. The word " Jehovah " has its 
deep significance brought out by being rendered " the 
Eternal." The famous Shiloh (Gen xlix. 10) is 
taken in its local sense, as the sanctuary where the 
young Samuel was trained ; which, if doctrinal per- 
versions did not interfere, hardly any one would doubt 
to be the true sense. The three opening verses of 
Genesis are treated as side-cl2i\ises (" when God cre- 
ated," &c.) ; so that the first direct utterance of the 
Bible is in the fourth verse, " God said, Let there 
BE LIGHT." Striking as this is, the Hebrew permits 
rather than requires it. Less admissible is the divi- 
sion after ver. 4 of the second chapter ; as if " This is 
the history " was a summary of what precedes, instead 
of an announcement of what follows. But the first, 
verse of the second chapter belongs properly to the 
preceding. Sometimes the translator seems right in 
substance but wrong in detail. He rightly rejects 
the perversions which make the cursing Psalms evan- 
gelically inspired ; but he forgets that the bitterest 
curses of Ps. cix. (from verse 6 to 19) are not the 
Psalmist's own, but a speech in the month of his 
adversary. These are trifles, when compared with 
the mass of information, and the manner of wielding 
it, in the prefaces to the work. There is a grasp of 
materials and a breadth of view from which the most 
practised theologian may learn something, and persons 
least versed in biblical studies acquire a comprehen- 
sive idea of them. Nothing can be more dishonest 
than the affectation of contempt with which some Eng- 
lish critics endeavored to receive this instalment of 



72 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEAECHES. 

a glorious work. To sneer at demonstrated criticisms 
as " old," and to brand fresh discoveries as " new," 
is worthy of men who neither understand the Old 
Testament nor love the New ; but they to whom the 
Bible is dear for the truth's sake will wish its illustri- 
ous translator life to accomplish a task as worthy of a 
Christian statesman's retirement as the Tusculans of 
Cicero were of the representative of Rome's lost free- 
dom. 

Already, in the volume before mentioned. Baron 
Bunsen has exhibited the Hebrew prophets as wit- 
nesses to the Divine Government. To estimate aright 
his services in this province would require, from most 
Englishmen, years of study. Accustomed to be told 
that modern history is expressed by the prophets in 
a riddle, which requires only a key to it, they are 
disappointed to hear of moral lessons, however impor- 
tant. Such notions are the inheritance of days when 
Justin could argue, in good faith, that by " the riches 
of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria " were intended 
the Magi and their gifts, and that " the King of As- 
syria " signified King Herod (!) ; * or when Jerome 
could say, "No one doubts that by Chaldeans are 
meant demons,"! and the Shunammite Abishag could 
be no other than heavenly wisdom, for the honor of 
David's old age, J — not to mention such things as 
Lot's daughters symbolizing the Jewish and Gentile 



* Isa. viii. 4. Trypho, § 77, 8, 9. Well might Trypho answer, that such 
interpi-etations ave strained, if not blasphemous. 

t On Isa. xliii. 14, 15, and again on chap, xlviii. 12-16. He also shows 
on xlviii. 22, that the Jews of that day had not lost the historical sense of 
their prophecies, though mystical renderings had already shown themselves. 
But the later mysticists charitably prayed for Hillel, because his expositiops 
had been historical (see Pearson's Notes on Art. iii.) When will unr mys- 
ticists show as Christian a temper as the Jewish ones? Condonet Dominus 
hoc R. Hillel! 

X To Nepotian, Letter 52. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 73 

churches.* It was truly felt by the early Fathers, 
that Hebrew prophecy tended to a system more spirit- 
ual than that of Levi ; and they argued unanswerably, 
that circumcision and the sabbath f were symbols for 
a time, or means to ends. But when, instead of using 
the letter as an instrument of the spirit, they began 
to accept the letter in all its parts as their law, and 
twisted it into harmony with the details of gospel his- 
tory, they fell into inextricable contradictions. The 
most rational interpreter among them is Jerome, and 
the perusal of his criticisms is their ample confuta- 
tion. J Nor could the strong intellect of Augustine 
compensate for his defect of little Greek, which he 
shared with half, and of less Hebrew, which he shared 
with most of the Fathers. But with the revival of 
learning began a reluctant and wavering yet inevit- 
able retreat from the details of patristic exposition, 
accompanied with some attempts to preserve its spirit. 
Even Erasmus looked that way ; Luther's and Calvin's 
strong sense impelled them some strides in the same 
direction : but Grotius, who outweighs, as a critic, any 
ten opposites, went boldly on the road. In our own 
country, each successive defence of the prophecies. 



* Presbyteri apud Irenseum. 

t Trypho, § 41-43. This tract of Justin's shows strikingly a transition 
from the utmost evangelical freedom, with simplicity of thought, to a more 
learned but confused speculation and literalism. He still thinks reason a 
revelation, Socrates a Christian, prophecy a necessary and perpetual gift of 
God's people, circumcision temporary, because not natural; and lustral wash- 
ings, which he contrasts with mental baptism, superstitious. His view of 
the sabbath is quite St. Paul's. His making a millennial resurrection the 
Christian doctrine, as opposed to the Heathen immoi-tality of the soul, is 
embarrassing, bi\t perhaps primitive. But his scriptural interpretations 
are dreams, and his charge against the Jews of corrupting the prophets as 
suicidal as it is groundless. 

X Thus he makes Isaac's hundred-fold increase (Gen. xxvi. 12) mean 
*' multiplication of virtues," because no grain is specified ! — QucBst. Hebraic, 
in Gen., chap. xxvi. When Jerome Origenizes, he is worse than Origen, 
because he does not, like that great genius, distinguish the historical from 
the mystical sense. 

4 



74 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 

in proportion as its author was able, detracted some- 
thing from the extent of literal prognostication ; and 
either laid stress on the moral element, or urged a 
second, as the spiritual sense. Even Butler foresaw 
the possibility, that every prophecy in the Old Testa- 
ment might have its elucidation in contemporaneous 
history ; but literature was not his strong point, and 
he turned aside, endeavoring to limit it, from an 
unwelcome idea. Bishop Chandler is said to have 
thought twelve passages in the Old Testament directly 
Messianic : others restricted this character to five. 
Paley ventures to quote only one. Bishop Kidder * 
conceded freely an historical sense in Old Testament 
texts, remote from adaptations in the New. The apos- 
tolic Middleton pronounced firmly for the same prin- 
ciple. Archbishop Newcome f and others proved in 
detail its necessity. Coleridge, in a suggestive letter, 
preserved in the memoirs of Cary, the translator of 
Dante, threw secular prognostication altogether out 
of the idea of prophecy. J Dr. Arnold and his truest 
followers bear, not always consistently, on the same 
side. On the other hand, the declamatory assertions, 
so easy in pulpits or on platforms, and aided some- 
times by powers, which produce silence rather than 
conviction, have not only kept alive, but magnified 



* Collected in the " Boyle Lectures." 

t A Literal Translation of the Prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi, with 
Notes, by Lowth, Blayney, Newcome, Wintle, Horsley, &c.; London, 1836, 
— a book unequal, but useful for want of a better; and of which a revision, 
if not an entire recast, with the aid of recent expositors, might employ our 
biblical scholars. 

J " Of prophecies in the sense of prognostication I utterly deny that there 
is any instance delivered by one of tlie ilhistrious Diadoche, whom the Jew- 
ish Church comprised in the name ' Prophets; ' and I shall re<ijard Cyy-ns as 
an exception, when I believe the hundred and thirty-seventh Psalm to have 
been composed by David. . . . Nay, I will go further, and assert that the 
contrary beHef, the hypothesis of prognostication, is in irreconcilable oppug- 
nancv to our Lord's declaration, that the Ihnes hath the Father reserved to 
himself." — Memoir of Cary, vol. ii. p. 180. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 75 

with uncritical exaggeration, whatever the Fathers 
had dreamt or modern rhetoric could add, tend- 
ing to make prophecy miraculous. Keith's edition 
of Newton need not be here discussed. Davison of 
Oriel, with admirable skill, threw his argument into a 
series, as it were, of hypothetical syllogisms, with only 
the defect (which some readers overlook), that his 
mmor premise can hardly, in a single instance, be 
proved. Yet the stress which he lays on the moral 
element of prophecy atones for his sophistry as regards 
the predictive. On the whole, even in England, there 
is a wide gulf between the arguments of our genuine 
critics, with the convictions of our most learned clergy 
on the one side, and the assumptions of popular dec- 
lamation on the other. This may be seen on a com- 
parison of Kidder with Keith.* But in Germany 
there has been a pathway streaming with light, from 
Eichhorn to Ewald, aided by the poetical penetration 
of Herder and the philological researches of Gesenius, 
throughout which the value of the moral element in 
prophecy has been progressively raised, and that of 
the directly predictive, whether secular or Messianic, 
has been lowered. Even the conservatism of Jahn 

* Amongst recent authors, Dr. Palfrey, an American scholar, has ex- 
pounded in five learned volumes the difficulties in current traditions about 
prophecy; but, instead of remedying these by restricting the idea of revela- 
tion to Moses and the Gospels, he"^ would have done better to seek a definition 
of revelation which should apply to the Psalms and Prophets and Epistles. i 

Mr. Francis Newman, in his " Hebrew Monarchy," is historically con- 
sistent in his expositions, which have not been controverted by any serious 
argument: but his mind seems to fail in the ideal element; else he would 
see that the typical ideas (of patience or of glory) in the Old Testament 
find their culminating fulfilment in the New. 

Mr. IMansel's " Bampton Lectures" must make even those who value 
his argument regret, that to his acknowledged dialectical ability he has not 
added the rudiments of biblical criticism. In all kis volume, not one text of 
Scripture is elucidated, nor a single difficult}^ in the evidences of Christianity 
removed. Recognized mistranslations and misreadings are alleged as argu- 
ments, and passages from the Old Testament are employed without refer- 

1 This is an over?ight or an error on the part of Dr. Williams. Dr. Palfrey recog- 
nizes no such difference between the Gospels and Epistles.— Cliristian Examiner, 
Nov. 1860. 



76 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL KESEARCHES. 

amongst Romanists, and of Hengstenberg amongst 
Protestants, is free and rational, compared to what is 
often in this country required with denunciation, but 
seldom defended by argument. 

To this inheritance of opinion Baron Bunsen suc- 
ceeds. Knowing these things, and writing for men 
who know them, he has neither the advantage in 
argument of unique knowledge nor of unique igno- 
rance. He dare not say, though it was formerly said, 
that David foretold the exile, because it is mentioned 
in the Psalms. He cannot quote Nahum denounc- 
ing ruin against Nineveh, or Jeremiah against Tyre, 
without remembering that already the Babylonian 
power threw its shadow across Asia, and Nebuchad- 
nezzar was mustering his armies. If he would quote 
the Book of Isaiah, he cannot conceal, after Gesenius, 
Ewald, and Maurer have written, that the book is 
composed of elements of different eras. Finding 
Perso-Babylonian or new-coined words, such as sagans 
for officers, and Chaldaic forms of the Hebrew verb, 
such as Aphel for Hiphil, in certain portions ; and 
observing that the political horizon of these portions 
is that of the sixth century, while that of the elder 
or more purely Hebraic portions belonged to the 



ence to the illustration or inversion which they have received in the New. 
Hence, as the eristic arts of logic without knowledge of the subject-matter 
become powerless, the author is a mere gladiator hitting in the dark, and 
his blows fall heaviest on what it was his duty to defend. As to his main 
argument (surely a strange parody of Butler), the sentence from Sir W. 
Hamilton, prefixed to his volume, seems to me its gem an|t.its confutation. 
Of the reasoning, which would bias our interpretation oflfeaiah by telling 
us Feuerbach was an Athiest, I need not say a word. 

We are promised from Oxford further elucidations of the Minor Prophets 
by the Regius Professor of Hebrew, whose book seems launched sufficiently 
to catch the gales of friendship, without yet tempting out of harbor the 
blasts of criticism. Let lis hope that, when the work appears, its interpre- 
tations may differ from those of a "' Catena Aurea," published under high 
auspices in the same university, in which the narrative of Uriah the Hittite 
is improved by making David represent Christ, and Uriah symbolize the 
Devil; so that the grievous crime which " displeased the Lord" becomes a 
typical prophecy of Him who was harmless and undefiled ! 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL KESEARCHES. 77 

eighth, — he must accept a theory of authorship and 
of prediction modified accordingly. So, if, under the 
head of Zechariah, he finds three distinct styles and 
aspects of affairs, he must acknowledge so much, 
whether he is right or wrong, in conjecturing the 
elder Zechariah of the age of Isaiah to have written 
the second portion, and Uriah, in Jeremiah's age, the 
third. If he would quote Micah, as designating Beth- 
lehem for the birthplace of the Messiah, he cannot 
shut his eyes to the fact, that the Deliverer to come 
from thence was to be a contemporary shield against 
the Assyrian. If he would follow Pearson in quoting 
the second Psalm : " Thou art my son," he knows 
that Hebrew idiom convinced even Jerome * the true 
rendermg was, " Worship purely." He may read in 
Ps. xxxiv. that *' iiot a bone of the righteous shall be 
broken;" but he must feel a difficulty in detaching 
this from the context, so as to make it a prophecy 
of the crucifixion. If he accepts mere versions of 
Ps. xxii. 17, he may wonder how "■ piercing the hands 
and the feet " can fit into the whole passage : but, if 
he prefers the most ancient Hebrew reading, he finds, 
instead of '-'• piercing ^^ the comparison " like a lion ; " 
and this corresponds sufficiently with the " dogs " of 
the first clause ; though a morally certain emendation 
would make the parallel more perfect by reading the 
word "lions" in both clauses. f In either case, the 
staring monsters are intended by whom Israel is sur- 
rounded and torn. Again, he finds in Hosea that 
the Lord loved Israel when he was young, and called 



* " Cavillatur . . . qiiod posuerim . . . Adoraiepure^ . . . ne violentus 
viderer interpres, et Jud, locum darem." — Eieron. c. Ruffin., § 19. 

t By reading D"'J<'':3Sd for CdSd- The Septuagint version may have 
arisen from ^JUT^H) taken as from ^r3> 



78 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 

him out of Egypt to be his son ; but he must feel, 
with Bishop Kidder, that such a citation is rather 
accommodated to the flight of Joseph into Egypt, 
than a prediction to be a ground of argument. Fresh 
from the services of Christmas, he may sincerely ex- 
claim, " Unto us a child is born : " but he knows that 
the Hebrew, translated " Mighty God," is at least dis- 
putable ; that perhaps it means only " Strong and 
Mighty One," " Father of an Age ; " and he can never 
listen to any one who pretends that the maiden's 
child of Isa. vii. 14 was not to be born in the reign 
of Ahaz, as a sign against the kings Pekah and Rezin. 
In the case of Daniel, he may doubt whether all parts 
of the book are of one age, or what is tlie starting- 
point of the seventy weeks ; but two results are clear 
beyond fair doubt, — that the period of weeks ended 
in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, and that those 
portions of the book supposed to be specially pre- 
dictive are a history of past occurrences up to that 
)A reign. When so vast an induction on the destructive 
'^'side has been gone through, it avails little that some 
■^' passages may be doubtful, — one perhaps in Zecha- 
riah, and one in Isaiah, capable of being made directly 
Messianic ; and a chapter, possibly, in Deuteronomy, 
foreshadowing the final fall of Jerusalem. Even these 
few cases, the remnant of so much confident rhetoric, 
tend to melt, if they are not already melted, in the 
crucible of searching inquiry. If our German had 
ignored all that the masters of philology have proved 
on these subjects, his countrj^men would have raised 
a storm of ridicule, at which he must have drowned 
himself in the Neckar. 

Great, then, is Baron Bunsen's merit, in accepting 
frankly the belief of scholars, and yet not despairing 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEARCHES. 79 

of Hebrew prophecy as a witness to the kingdom of 
God. The way of doing so, left open to him, was 
to show, pervading the prophets, those deep truths 
which lie at the heart of Christianity ; and to trace 
the growth of such ideas — the belief in a righteous 
God, and the nearness of man to God ; the power of 
prayer, and the victory of self-sacrificing patience, ever 
expanding in men's hearts — until the fulness of time 
came, and the ideal of the Divine Thought was ful- 
filled in the Son of man. Such, accordingly, is the 
course our author pursues, not with the critical finish 
of Ewald, but with large moral grasp. "Why he should 
add to his moral and metaphysical basis of prophecy a 
notion of foresight by vision of particulars or a kind 
of clairvoyance, though he admits it to be * a natural 
gift, consistent with fallibility, is not so easy to ex- 
plain. One would wish he might have intended only 
the power of seeing the ideal in the actual, or of 
tracing the Divine Government in the movements of 
men. He seems to mean more than presentiment 
or sagacity ; and this element in liis system requires 
proof. 

The most brilliant portion of the prophetical essays 
is the treatment of the later Isaiah. With the inser- 
tion of four chapters, concerning Hezekiah, from the 
histories of the kings, the words and deeds of the elder 
Isaiah apparently close. It does not follow that all 
the prophecies arranged earlier in the book are from 
his lips ; probably they are not : but it is clear to 



* " Die Kraft des Schauens, die im Menschen verborgen liegt, und, von 
der Naturnothwendigkeit befreit, im hebraisclien Prophetenthum sicli zur 
wahren ^Veltanschauung erhoben hat, . . . ist der Schliissel," &c. — Gott in 
der Geschichte, p. 149. 

" Jene Herriichkeit besteht nicht in dem Vorhersagen. . . . Dieses haben 
sie gemein mit manclien Ansspriichen der Pythia, . . . und mit vielen 
Weissagungen der HeEselierinnen dieses Jahrhunderts." — Id. p. 151. 



80 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEARCHES. 

demonstration,* that the later chapters (xL, &c.) are 
upon the stooping of Nebo and the bowing-down of 
Babylon, when the Lord took out of the hand of Jeru- 
salem the cup of trembling ; for the glad tidings of 
the decree of return were heard upon the moun- 
tains, and the people went forth, not with haste or 
flight ; for their God went before them, and was tjieir 
rearward (chap. lii.). So they went forth with joy, 
and were led forth with peace (chap. liv.). So tlie 
arm of the Lord was laid bare ; and his servant who 
had foretold it was now counted wise, though none 
had believed his report. We cannot take a portion 
out of this continuous song, and, by dividing it as a 
chapter, separate its primary meaning from what pre- 
cedes and follows. The servant in chap. lii. and liii. 
must have relation to the servant in chap. xlii. and 
xlix. Who was this servant, that had foretold the 
exile and the return, and had been a man of grief, 
rejected of his people, imprisoned and treated as a 
malefactor ? The oldest Jewish tradition, preserved 
in Origen f and to be inferred from Justin, J said the 
chosen people, in opposition to heathen oppressors ; 
an opinion which suits chap. xlix. vcr. 3. Nor is 
the later § exposition of the Targum altogether at va- 
riance : for, though Jonathan speaks of the Messiah, 



* To prove this, let any one read Jerome's arguments against it, if the 
sacred text itself "be not sufficient proof, — " Go ye forth of Babylon," &cc.\ 
chap, xlviii. 20, 

t C. Celsum, i. 55 (quoted by Pearson). 

X For, in making the Gentiles mean proselytes, they must have made the 
servant Israel. aXKa ri ; ov rrpbs rbv voy^ov Xe'yet, kcu tovs <pa>Ti^o- 
fievovs VTV avrov^ k. r. X. — Trypho, § 122. 

§ Later, because it implies the fall of Jerusalem. It is thought to have 
been compiled in the fourth century of our era. It is very doubtful whether 
the Jewish schools of the middle ages had, except in fragments, any her- 
meneutic tradition so old as what we gather from the Church Fathers, how- 
ever unfairly this may be reported. Sly own belief is clear, that they had 
not. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 81 

it is ill the character of a Judaic deliverer; and his 
expressions about " the holy people's being multi- 
plied " and seeing their sanctuary rebuilt, especially 
when he calls the holy people a " remnant," * may be 
fragments of a tradition older than his time. It is 
idle, with Pearson,f to quote Jonathan as a witness to 
the Christian interpretation, unless his conception of 
the Messiah were ours. But the idea of the Anointed 
One, which in some of the Psalms belongs to Israel, 
shifted from time to time ; being applied, now to 
people, and now to king or prophet, until at length 
it assumed a sterner form,^ as the Jewish spirit was 
hardened by persecutions into a more vindicative hope. 
The first Jewish expositor who loosened without break- 
ing Rabbinical fetters, R. Saadiah,J in the ninth cen- 
tury, named Jeremiah as the man of grief, and em- 
phatically the prophet of the return, rejected of his 
people. Grotius, with his usual sagacity, divined the 
same clew ; though Michaelis says upon it, pessime 
Grotius. Baron Bunsen puts together, with masterly 
analysis, the illustrative passages of Jeremiah ; and it 
is difiicult to resist the conclusion to which they tend. 
Jeremiah compares his whole people to sheep going 
astray ; § and himself, to a " lamb or an ox brought to 
the slaughter." || He was taken from prison,^ and 
his generation, or posterity, none took account of;** 
he interceded for his people in prayer : f f but was 
not the less despised and a man of grief, so that no 

*NkJ^nip mSin JUD% and ^nxty n^ r\'i:i'^-\.— Targvm onl&^.mi. 

t In Pearson's hands, even the Eabbins become more Rabbinical. His 
citations from Jonathan and from Jarchi are most unfair, and in general he 
makes their prose more prosaic. 

X Titularly stvled Gaon, as president of the Sora school. . 
\ Jer. xxiii. l', 2 ; 1. 6 - 17 ; xii. 3. || Jer. xi. 19. 

^ Jer. xxxviii. 4-6, 13; xxxvii. 16. 
** Jer. xi. 19-23; xx. 10; xxxvi. 19; xlv. 2, 3. 
tt Jer. xviii. 20; xiv. 11; xv. 1. 

4* P 



82 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 

sorrow was like his ; * men assigned his grave with 
the wicked,! and his tomb with the oppressors ; all 
who followed him seemed cut off out of the land of 
the living4 yet his seed prolonged their days ; § his 
prophecy was fulfilled, || and the arm of the Eternal 
laid bare ; he was counted wise on the return ; his 
place in the Book of Sirach ^ shows how eminently 
he was enshrined in men's thoughts as the servant of 
God ; and in the Book of Maccabees ** he is the gray 
prophet, who is seen in vision, fulfilling his task of 
interceding for the people. 

This is an imperfect sketch, but may lead readers to 
consider the arguments for applying Isa. lii. and liii. 
to Jeremiah. Their weight (in the master's hand) is 
so great, that, if any single person should be selected, 
they prove Jeremiah should be the one. Nor are they 
a slight illustration of the historical sense of that 
famous chapter, which in the original is a history.f f 
Still the general analogy of the Old Testament, which 
makes collective Israel, or the prophetic remnant, 
especially the servant of Jehovah, and the compar- 
ison of chap, xlii., xlix., may permit us to think the 
oldest interpretation the truest ; with only this admis- 
sion, that the figure of Jeremiah stood forth amongst 
tlie prophets, and tinged the delineation of the true 
Israel, — that is, the faithful remnant who had been 
disbelieved, — just as the figure of Laud or Hammond 

* Jer. xviii. 18; xx. 9-17. Lam. iii. 1-13. 

t Lara. iii. 52-54. Jer. xxvi. 11-15, 23: xliv. 15, 16; i. 18, 19. 

j Jer. xlv. 1-3; xi. 19; xli. 2, 3; with xli. 9, 10. 

\ Ps. cxxvi. 1. Isa. xliii. 1-5, 10-14. 

II Lam. i. 17. Jer. xvi. 15; xxx. 1-3, 10, 18; xxxi. 6-12. Isa. xliv. 7, 
8; xlvi. 1-9,10; 1. 5, 6; lii. 10-13. 

f Ecclus. xlix. 6, 7, and Jer. i. ** 2 Mace. xv. 13, 14. 

tt The tenses from ver. 2 onward are rather historical than predictive; 
and in ver. 8, for "he was stricken," the Hebrew is ir^^ ^♦jj, the "stroke 
was upon them; " i. e. on the generation of the faithful, which was cut off; 
when the blood of the prophets was shed on every side of Jei-usalem. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEARCHES. 8S 

might represent the Caroline Church in the eyes of 
her poet. 

If this seems but a compromise, it may be justified 
by Ewald's phrase, "Die wenigen Treuen im Exile, 
Jeremjah und andre," * though he makes the servant 
idealized Israel. 

If any sincere Christian now asks, "Is not then, 
our Saviour spoken of in Isaiah ? " let him open his 
New Testament, and ask therewith John the Baptist, 
whether he was Elias. If he finds the Baptist an- 
swering, " I am not," yet our Lord testifies that in 
spirit and power this was Elias, a little reflection will 
show how the historical representation in Isa. liii. is 
of some suffering prophet or remnant, yet the truth 
and patience, the grief and triumph, have their 
highest fulfilment in him who said, " Father, not my 
will, but thine." But we must not distort the proph- 
ets to prove the Divine Word incarnate, and then, 
from the incarnation, reason back to the sense of 
prophecy. 

Loudly as justice and humanity exclaim against 
such traditional distortion of prophecy as makes their 
own sacred writings a ground of cruel prejudice 
against the Hebrew people, and the fidelity of this 
remarkable race to the oracles of their fathers a 
handle for social obloquy, the cause of Christianity 
itself would be the greatest gainer, if we laid aside 
weapons, the use of which brings shame. Israel 
would be acknowledged as in some sense still a 
Messiah, having borne centuries of reproach through 
the sin of the nations ; but the Saviour who fulfilled 
in his own person the highest aspiration of Hebrew 

* Die Propheteu d. A. B., 2ter Band, pp. 438-453. 



Si BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEARCHES. 

seers and of mankind, thereby lifting the ancient 
words, so to speak, into a new and higher power, 
would be recognized as having eminently the unction 
of a prophet whose words die not, of a priest in a 
temple not made with hands, and of a king in the 
realm of thought, delivering his people from a bond- 
age of moral evil worse than Egypt or Babylon. If 
already the vast majority of the prophecies are ac- 
knowledged by our best authorities to require some 
such rendering in order to Christianize them, and if 
this acknowledgment has become uniformly stronger 
in proportion as learning was unfettered, the force of 
analogy leads us to anticipate tliat our Isaiah, too, 
must require a similar interpretation. No new prin- 
ciple is thrust upon the Christian world by our his- 
torical understanding of this famous chapter ; but a 
case which had been thought exceptional is shown to 
harmonize with a general principle. 

Whether the great prophet, whose triumphant 
thanksgiving on the return from Babylon forms the 
later chapters of our Isaiah, is to remain without a 
name, or whether Baron Bunsen has succeeded in 
identifying him with Baruch, the disciple, scribe, and 
perhaps biographer or editor of Jeremiah, is a ques- 
tion of probability. Most readers of the argument for 
the identity will feel inclined to assent : but a doubt 
may occur, whether many an unnamed disciple of the 
prophetic school may not have burnt with kindred 
zeal, and used diction not peculiar to any one ; while 
such a doubt may be strengthened by the confidence 
with which our critic ascribes a recasting of Job, and 
of parts of other books, to the same favorite Baruch. 
Yet, if kept within the region of critical conjecture, 
his reasons are something more than ingenious. It 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 85 

may weigh with some Anglicans, that a letter as- 
cribed to St. Athanasius mentions Baruch among the 
canonical prophets.* 

Li distinguishing the man Daniel from our Book of 
Daniel, and in bringing the latter as low as the reign 
of Epiphanes, our author only follows the admitted 
necessities of the case.f Not only Macedonian words, 
such as symphoniaX and psanterion, but the texture of 
the Chaldaic, with such late forms as p'^'? p, and \h^ 
the pronominal d and n having passed into |, and not 
only minute description of Antiochus's reign, but the 
stoppage of such description at the precise date 169 
B. C, remove all philological and critical doubt as 
to the age of the book. But what seems peculiar to 
Baron Bunsen, is the interpretation of the four em- 
pires' symbols with reference to the original Daniel's 
abode in Nineveh : so that the winged lion tradition- 
ally meant the Assyrian Empire ; the bear was the 
Babylonian symbol ; the leopard, that of the Medes 
and Persians ; while the fourth beast represented, as 
is not uncommonly held, the sway of Alexander. A 
like reference is traced in the mention of Hiddekel, 
or the Tigris, in chap, x.; for, if the scene had been 
Babylon under Darius, the river must have been the 
Euphrates. The truth seems, that, starting like many 
a patriot bard of our own from a name traditionally 
sacred, the writer used it, with no deceptive intention, 
as a dramatic form which dignified his encouragement 



* lepe/xia?, Koi crvv avrS Bapov^i QprjvoL, 'ETrKTTokrj Koi fier avTov 
'UC^Kirik, K.T.X. — -EP- Fek 

t Auberlen, indeed, defends ; but says, " Die Unaclitheit Daniels ist in 
der modernen Theologie zum Axiom geworden." — Der Prophet Daniel. 
Basel, 1854. 

I Compare " Philosophy of Universal History," (part of the " Hip- 
polytus") vol. i. pp. 217-19, with " Gott in der Geschichte, Istr. Theil 
pp. 514- 40. 



86 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 

of his countrymen in their great struggle against 
Antiochus. The original place of the book* amongst 
the later Hagiographa of the Jewish canon, and the 
absence of any mention of it by the son of Sirach, 
strikingly confirm this view of its origin ; and, if some 
obscurity rests upon details, the general conclusion, 
that the book contains no predictions except by anal- 
ogy and type, can hardly be gainsaid. But it may not 
the less, with some of the latest Psalms, have nerved 
the men of Israel, when they turned to flight the ar- 
mies of the aliens ; and it suggests, in the godless 
invader, no slight forecast of Cahgula again invading 
the Temple with like abomination, as well as of what- 
ever exalts itself against faith and conscience, to the 
end of the world. It is time for divines to recognize 
these things ; since, with their opportunities of study, 
the current error is as discreditable to them, as for 
the well-meaning crowd, who are taught to identify it 
with their creed, it is a matter of grave compassion. 

It provokes a smile on serious topics to observe the 
zeal with which our critic vindiVates the personality 
of Jonah, and the originality of his hymn (the latter 
being generally thought doubtful), while he proceeds 
to explain that the narrative of our book, in which the 
hymn is embedded, contains a late legend,! founded 
on misconception. One can imagine the cheers, which 
the opening of such an essay might evoke in some of 
our own circles, changing into indignation as the dis- 
tinguished foreigner developed his views. After this, 
he might speak more gently of mythical theories. 

But if such a notion alarms those who think, that, 

* The saying, that hater Jews changed the place of the book in the 
canon, seems to rest on no evidence. 

t The present writer feels excused from repeating here the explanation 
given in the Appendix to his Sermon on Chi'istian Freedom. London, 1858. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 87 

apart from omniscience belonging to the Jews, the 
proper conclusion of reason is atheism, it is not in- 
consistent with the idea, that Almighty God has been 
pleased to educate men and nations, employing imag- 
ination no less than conscience, and suffering his les- 
sons to play freely within the limits of humanity and 
its shortcomings. Nor will any fair reader rise from 
the prophetical disquisitions without feeling that he 
has been under the guidance of a master's hand. The 
great result is to vindicate the work of the Eternal 
Spirit, — that abiding influence, which, as our Church 
teaches us in the Ordination Service, underlies all 
others, and in which converge all images of old time, 
and means of grace now ; temple. Scripture, finger 
and hand of God ; and again, preaching, sacraments, 
waters which comfort, and flame which burns. If 
such a Spirit did not dwell in the Church, the Bible 
would not be inspired ; for the Bible is, before all 
things, the written voice of the congregation. Bold 
as such a theory of inspiration may sound, it was the 
earliest creed of the Church, and it is the only one to 
which the facts of Scripture answer. The sacred 
writers acknowledge themselves men of like passions 
with ourselves, and we are promised illumination from 
the Spirit which dwelt in them. Hence, when we find 
our Prayer-book constructed on the idea of the Church 
being an inspired society instead of objecting that 
every one of us is fallible, we should define inspiration 
consistently with the facts of Scripture and of human 
nature. These would neither exclude the idea of 
fallibility among Israelites of old, nor teach us to 
quench the Spirit in true hearts forever. But if any 
one prefers thinking the sacred writers passionless 
machines, and calling Luther and Milton " uninspired," 



88 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEAECHES. 

let liim co-operate in researches by which his theory, 
if true, will be triumphantly confirmed. Let him join 
in considering it a religious duty to print the most 
genuine text of those words which he calls divme ; 
let liim yield no grudging assent to the removal of 
demonstrated interpolations in our text, or errors in 
our translation ; let him give English equivalents for 
its Latinisms, once natural, but now become deceptive ; 
let him next trace fairly the growth of our complex 
doctrines out of scriptural germs, whether of simple 
thought or of Hebrew idiom : then, if he be not pre- 
pared to trust our Church with a larger freedom in 
incorporating into her language the results of such 
inquiry and adapting one-sided forms to wider experi- 
ence, he will at least have acquired such a knowledge 
of this field of thought as may induce him to treat 
laborers in it with respect. A recurrence to first 
principles, even of revelation, may, to minds prudent 
or timid, seem a process of more danger than advan- 
tage ; and it is possible to defend our traditional the- 
ology, if stated reasonably, and with allowance for the 
accidents of its growth. But what is not possible, 
with honesty, is to uphold a fabric of mingled faith 
and speculation, and in the same breath to violate the 
instinct which believed, and blindfold the mind which 
reasoned. It would be strange if God's work were 
preserved by disparaging the instruments which his 
wisdom chose for it. 

On turning to the " Hippolytus," * we find a congeries 
of subjects, but yet a whole, pregnant and suggestive 



* Hippolytus and his Age, by Chr. C J. Btinsen, &c. London, 1852, 
second edition; recast, London, 1854. The awakening freshness of the first 
edition is hardly replaced by the fulness of the second. It is to be wished 
that the biblical portions of the Philosophy of Universal History, vol. ii. 
pp 149-338, were reprinted in a cheap form. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL BESEARCHES. 89 

beyond any book of our time. To lay deep the foun- 
dations of faith in the necessities of the human mind, 
and to estabhsh its confirmation by history, distin- 
guishing the local from the universal, and translating 
the idioms of priesthoods or races into the broad 
speech of humanity, are amongst parts of the great 
argument. Of those wonderful aphorisms which are 
further * developed in the second volume of " Gott in 
der Geschichte," suffice it here, that their author 
stands at the farthest pole from those who find no 
divine footsteps in the Gentile world. He believes in 
Christ, because he first believes in God and in man- 
kind. In this he harmonizes with the Church Fathers 
before Augustine, and with all our deepest Evangeli- 
cal school. In handling the New Testament, he re- 
mains faithful to his habit of exalting spiritual ideas, 
and the leading characters by whose personal impulse 
they have been stamped on the world. Other founda- 
tion for healthful mind or durable society he suffers 
no man to lay, save that of Jesus, the Christ of God. 
In him he finds brought to perfection that religious 
idea, which is the thought of the Eternal ; without 
conformity to which, our souls cannot be saved from 
evil. He selects for emphasis such sayings as, "I 
came to cast fire upon the earth ; and how I would 
it were already kindled ! I have a baptism to be 
baptized with ; and how am I straitened until it be 
accomplished ! " In these he finds the innermost 
mind of the Son of man, undimmed by the haze of 
mingled imagination and remembrance with which 
his awful figure should scarcely fail to be at length 
invested by affection. The glimpses thus afforded us 
into the depth of our Lord's purpose, and his law of 
giving rather than receiving, explain the wonder- 



90 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEAKCHES. 

working power with which he wielded the truest 
hearts of his generation, and correspond to his life 
and death of self-sacrifice. 

This recognition of Christ, as the moral Saviour of 
mankind, may seem, to some, Baron Bunsen's most 
obvious claim to the name of " Christian ; " for, though 
he embraces with more than orthodox warmth New 
Testament terms, he explains them in such a way, that 
he may be charged with using evangelical language in 
a philosophical sense. But, in reply, he would ask, 
What proof is there that the reasonable sense of 
St. Paul's words was not the one which the Apostle 
intended ? Why may not justification by faith have 
meant the peace of mind, or sense of Divine approval, 
which comes of trust in a righteous God, rather than 
a fiction of merit by transfer ? St. Paul would then 
be teaching moral responsibility, as opposed to sacer- 
dotalism ; or that to obey is better than sacrifice. 
Faith would be opposed, not to the good deeds which 
conscience requires, but to works of appeasement by 
ritual. Justification would be neither an arbitrary 
ground of confidence, nor a reward upon condition of 
our disclaiming merit, but rather a verdict of forgive- 
ness upon our repentance, and of acceptance upon the 
offering of our hearts. It is not a fatal objection to 
say that St. Paul would thus teach natural religion, 
unless we were sure that he was bound to contradict 
it ; but it is a confirmation of the view, if it brings 
his hard sayings into harmony with the Gospels and 
with the Psalms, as well as with the instincts of our 
best conscience. If we had dreamed of our nearest 
kindred in irreconcilable combat, and felt anguish at 
the thought of opposing either, it could be no greater 
relief to awake, and find them at concord, than it 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEAECHES. 91 

would be to some minds to find the antagonism be- 
tween nature and revelation vanishing* in a wider 
grasp and deeper perception of the one, or in a better 
balanced statement of the other. 

If our philosopher had persuaded us of the moral 
nature of justification, he would not shrink from 
adding that regeneration is a correspondent giving of 
insight, or an awakening of forces of the soul. By 
resurrection he would mean a spiritual quickening. 
Salvation would be our deliverence, not from the life- 
giving God, but from evil and darkness, which are his 
finite opposites (o avrcK^L/jLevo^^. Propitiation would be 
the recovery of that peace, which cannot be while sin 
divides us from the Searcher of hearts. The eternal 
is what belongs to God, as spirit ; therefore the nega- 
tion of things finite and unspiritual, whether world 
or letter, or rite of blood. The hateful fires of the 
Yale of Hinnom (Gehenna) are hardly in the strict 
letter imitated by the God who has pronounced them 
cursed, but may serve as images of distracted remorse. 
Heaven is not a place, so much as fulfilment of the 
love of God. The kingdom of God is no more Romish 
sacerdotalism than Jewish royalty, but the realization 
of the Divine Will in our thoughts and lives. This 
expression of spirit, in deed and form, is generically 
akin to creation, and illustrates the incarnation ; for, 
though the true substance of Deity took body in the 
Son of man, they who know the Divine Substance to 
be Spirit will conceive of such embodiment of the 
Eternal Mind very differently from those who abstract 
all divine attributes, — such as consciousness, fore- 



* " The doctrine of the Fall, the doctrine of Grace, and the doctrine of 
the Atonement, a?'e grounded in the instincts of mankind." — Mozley on Pre- 
destination, chap. xi. p. 331. 



92 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 

thought, and love, — and then imagme a material resi- 
djAum, on which they confer the holiest name. The 
Divine Attributes are * consubstantial with the Divine 
Essence. He who abides in love, abides in God, and 
God in him. Thus the incarnation becomes with our 
author as purely spiritual as it was with St. Paul. 
The son of David by birth is the Son of God by the 
spirit of holiness. What is flesh is born of flesh, and 
what is spirit is born of spirit. f 

If Ave would estimate the truth of such views, the 
full import of which hardly lies on the surface, we 
find two lines of inquiry present themselves as crite- 
ria ; and each of these divides itself into two branches. 
First, as regards the subject-matter, both spiritual 
affection and metaphysical reasoning forbid us to con- 
fine revelations like those of Christ to the first half- 
century of our era ; but show, at least, afiinities of 
our faith existing in men's minds anterior to Chris- 
tianity, and renewed with deep echo from living 
hearts in many a generation. Again : on the side of 
external criticism, we find the evidences of our ca- 
nonical books, and of the patristic authors nearest to 
them, are sufficient to prove illustration in outward 
act of principles perpetually true, but not adequate to 
guarantee narratives inherently incredible or precepts 
evidently wrong. Hence we are obliged to assume 
in ourselves a verifying faculty, not unlike the dis- 
cretion Avhicli a mathematician would use in weighing 
a treatise on geometry, or the liberty which a musi- 
cian would reserve in reporting a law of harmony. 



* On this point, the summary of St, Augustine at the end of his fifteenth 
book, " On the Trinity," is worth reading. 

t "Neque sermo ahud quam Deus, neque caro aliud quam homo; " and 
" Ex carne homo, ex spiritu Deus." — TertuUiau adv. Prax. c. xxvii. Com* 
pare Rom. i. 1-3. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEAECHES. 93 

Thus, as we are expressly told, we are to have the 
witness in ourselves. It is not our part to dictate 
to Almighty God, that he ought to have spared us 
this strain upon our consciences ; nor, in giving us 
through his Son a deeper revelation of his own pres- 
ence, was he bound to accompany his gift by a spe- 
cial form of record.* Hence there is no antecedent 
necessity that the least rational view of the gospel 
should be the truest, or that our faith should have no 
human element, and its records be exempt from his- 
torical law. Rather we may argue, the more divine 
the germ, the more human must be the develop- 
ment. 

Our author, then, believes St. Paul, because he 
understands him reasonably. Nor does his accept- 
ance of Christ's redemption from evil bind him to 
repeat traditional fictions about our canon, or to read 
its pages with that dulness which turns symbol and 
poetry into materialism. On the side of history lies 
the strength of his genius. His treatment of the 
New Testament is not very unlike the acute criticism 
of Be Wette, tempered by the affectionateness of Ne- 
ander. He finds in the first three Gospels divergent 
forms of the tradition, once oral, and perhaps cate- 
chetical, in the congregations of the apostles. He 
thus explains the numerous traces characteristic of a 
traditional narrative. He does not ascribe the quad- 
ruple division* of record to the four churches of 
Jerusalem, Kome, Antioch, and Alexandria, on the 
same principle as liturgical families are traced ; but 
he requires time enough for some development, and 
for the passing of some symbol into story. By making 

* Butler's Analogy, part ii. chap. iii. Hooker, Eccl. Pol., books i. ii. 



94 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESE ARCHES. 

the fourth Gospel the latest of all our genuine books, 
he accounts for its style (so much more Greek than 
the Apocalypse), and explains many passages. The 
verse, " And no man hath ascended up into heaven but 
he that came down,"* is intelligible as a free com- 
ment near the end of the first century, but has no 
meaning in our Lord's mouth at a time when the as- 
cension had not been heard of. So the Apocalypse, if 
taken as a series of poetical visions which represent 
the outpouring of the vials of wrath upon the city 
where the Lord was slain, ceases to be a riddle. Its 
horizon answers to that of Jerusalem, already threat- 
ened by the legions of Vespasian ; and its language is 
partly adapted from the older prophets, partly a repe- 
tition of our Lord's warnings as described by the 
evangelists, or as deepened, into wilder threatenings 
in the mouth of the later Jesus,f the son of Ananus. 
The Epistle to the Hebrews, so different in its con- 
ception of faith and in its Alexandrine rhythm from 
the doctrine and the language of St. Paul's known 
Epistles, has its degree of discrepance explained by 
ascribing it to some J companion of the apostle's ; and 
minute reasons are found for fixing with probability 
on Apollos. The second of the Petrine Epistles, hav- 
ing alike external and internal evidence against its 
genuineness, is necessarily surrendered as a whole ; 
and our critic's good faith, in this respect, is more 
certain than the ingenuity with which he reconstructs 
a part of it. The second chapter may not improbably 
be a quotation ; but its quoter, and the author of the 
rest of the Epistle, need not, therefore, have been 



* John iii. 13. f Josephu?, B. J., b, vi. c. v. § 3. 

J In my ovni Judgment, the Epistle bears traces of being j^os^apostolic : 
iii. 14; xiii. 7; ii. 3; x. 2, 25-32. 



« 
BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEARCHES. 95 

St. Peter. Where so many points are handled, fanci- 
fulness in some may be pardoned ; and indulgence is 
needed for the eagerness with which St. Paul is made 
a widower, because some Fathers * misunderstood 
the texts, " true yoke-fellow," and " leading about a 
sister." 

After a survey of the canon, the working, as of 
leaven in meal, of that awakening of mankind which 
took its impulse from the life of Christ, is traced 
through the first seven generations of Christendom. 
After Origen, the first freedom of the gospel grows 
faint, or is hardened into a system more ecclesiastical 
in form and more dialectical in speculation ; the fresh 
language of feeling or symbol being transferred to 
the domain of logic, like Homer turned into prose by 
a scholiast. It need not, to a philosophical observer, 
necessarily follow, that the change was altogether a 
corruption ; for it may have been the providential 
condition of religious feeling brought into contact 
with intellect, and of the heavenly kingdom's expan- 
sion in the world. The elasticity with which Christi- 
anity gathers into itself the elements of natural piety, 
and assimilates the relics of Gentile form and usage, 
can only be a ground of objection with those who have 
reflected little on the nature of revelation ; but Baron 
Bunsen, as a countryman of Luther, and a follower of 
those " Friends of God " whose profound mysticism 
appears in the " Theologia Germanica," takes decided 
part with the first freshness of Christian freedom, 
against the confused thought and furious passions 
which disfigure most of the great councils. Those 
who imagine that the laws of criticism are arbitrary 

* Clement and Origen, amongst others. 



96 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEARCHES. 

(or, as they say, subjective) may learn a different 
lesson from the array of passages, the balance of evi- 
dence, and the estimate of each author's point of 
view, with which the picture of Christian antiquity 
is unrolled in the pages of the " Hippolytus." Every 
triumph of our faith, in purifying life or in softening 
and enlightening barbarism, is there expressed in the 
lively records of liturgies and canons ; and again the 
shadows of night approach, with monkish fanaticism 
and imperial tyranny, amidst intrigues of bishops who 
play the parts, alternately, of courtier and of dema- 
gogue. 

The picture was too truly painted for that ecclesias- 
tical school which appeals loudest to antiquity, and has 
most reason to dread it. While they imagine a system 
of divine immutability, or one in Avhich, at worst, holy 
Fathers unfolded reverently apostolic oracles, the true 
history of the Church exhibits the turbulent growth 
of youth ; a democracy, with all its passions, trans- 
forming itself into sacerdotalism, and a poetry, with 
its figures, partly represented by doctrine, and partly 
perverted. Even the text of Scripture fluctuated in 
sympathy with the changes of the Church, especially 
in passages bearing on asceticism and the fuller devel- 
opment of the Trinity. The first Christians held that 
the heart was purified by faith : the accompanying 
symbol, water, became by degrees the instrument of 
purification. Holy baptism was at first preceded by 
a vow, in which the young soldier expressed his con- 
sciousness of spiritual truth: but, when it became 
twisted into a false analogy with circumcision, the 
rite degenerated into a magical form ; and the Augus- 
tinian notion, of a curse inherited by infants, was 
developed in connection with it. Sacrifice, with the 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 97 

Psalmist, meant, not the goat's or heifer's blood-shed- 
ding, but the contrite heart expressed by it. So, with 
St. Paul, it meant the presenting of our souls and 
bodies, as an oblation of the reason, or worship of the 
mind. The ancient liturgies contain prayers that God 
would make our sacrifices " rational ; " that is, spirit- 
ual. Religion was thus moralized by a sense of the 
righteousness of God, and morality transfigured into 
religion by a sense of his holiness. Yestiges of this 
earliest creed yet remam in our communion-service. 
As in life, so in sacrament, the first Christians oifered 
themselves in the spirit of Christ ; therefore, in his 
name. But when the priest took the place of the con- 
gregation ; when the sacramental signs were treated 
as the natural body, and the bodily sufferings of Christ 
enhanced above the self-sacrifice of his will, even to 
the death of the cross, — the centre of Christian faith 
became inverted, though its form remained. Men for- 
got that the writer to the Hebrews exalts the blood of 
an everlasting — that is, of a spiritual — covenant ; 
for what is fleshly vanishes away. The angels who 
hover with vials, catching the drops from the cross, 
are pardonable in art, but make a step in theology to- 
wards transubstantiation. Salvation from evil through 
sharing the Saviour's spirit was shifted into a notion 
of purchase from God through the price of his bodily 
pangs. The deep drama of heart and mind became 
externalized into a commercial transfer, and this ef- 
fected by a form of ritual. So, with the more specu- 
lative Fathers, the doctrine of the Trinity was a pro- 
found metaphysical problem, wedded to what seemed 
consequences of the incarnation ; but, in ruder hands, 
it became a materialism almost idolatrous, or an arith- 



98 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEAECHES. 

metical enigma.* Even now, different accepters of 
the same doctrinal terms hold many shades of concep- 
tion between a philosophical view which recommends 
itself as easiest to believe, and one felt to be so irra- 
tional that it calls in the aid of terror. " Quasi non 
iinitas, irrationaliter collecta, haeresin faciat ; et Trini- 
tas rationaliter expensa, veritatem constituat," said 
Tertullian.f 

The historian of such variations was not likely, with 
those whose theology consists of invidious terms, to 
escape the nickname of Pelagian or Sabellian. He 
evidently could not state original sin in so exagger- 
ated a form as to make the design of God altered by 
the first agents in his creation, or to destroy the no- 
tion of moral choice and the foundation of ethics ; 
nor could his Trinity destroy by inference that divine 
Unity which all acknowledge in terms. The fall of 
Adam represents with him ideally the circumscription 
of our spirits in limits of flesh and time, and practi- 
cally the selfish nature with which we fall from the 
likeness of God, which should be fulfilled in man. So 
his doctrine of the Trinity ingenuously avoids building 
on texts which our Unitarian critics, from Sir Isaac 
Newton to Gilbert Wakefield, have impugned ; but is 
a philosophical rendering of the first chapter of St. 
John's Gospel. Tlie profoundest analysis of our world 
leaves the law of thought as its ultimate basis and 
bond of coherence. This thought is consubstantial 
with the being of the Eternal I AM. Being, becoming, 
and animating, or substance, thinking, and conscious 

* See this shown, with just rebuke of some Oxford sophistries, in the 
learned Bishop Kaye's " Council of Nicasa," London, 1853; a book of admi- 
rable moderation, though hardly of speculative power. See pp. 163, 168, 194, 
199, 219, 226, 251, 252. 

t Adv. Prax. c. iii. 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 99 

life, are expressions of a Triad, which may be also 
represented as will,* wisdom, and love ; as light, radi- 
ance, and warmth ; as fountain, stream, and imited 
flow ; as mind, thought, and consciousness ; as person, 
word, and life ; as Father, Son, and Spirit. In virtue 
of such identity of Thought with Being, the primitive 
Trinity represented neither three originant principles 
nor three transient phases, but three eternal inheren- 
cies in one Divine mind. " The unity of God, as the 
Eternal Father, is the fundamental doctrine of Chris- 
tianity:"! ^T^^ the Divine Consciousness or Wisdom, 
consubstantial with the Eternal Will, becoming per- 
sonal in the Son of man, is the express image of the 
Father ; and Jesus actually, but also mankind ideally, 
is the Son of God. If all this has a Sabellian or al- 
most a Brahmanical sound, its impugners are bound, 
even on patristic grounds, to show how it differs from 
the doctrine of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Hippolytus, 
Origen, and the historian Eusebius. If the language 
of those very Fathers who wrote against different forms 
of Sabellianism, would, if now first used, be condemned 
as Sabellian, are we to follow the ancient or the mod- 
ern guides ? May not a straining after orthodoxy, 
with all the confusion incident to metaphysical terms, 
have led the scholars beyond their masters ? We have 
some authorities, who, if Athanasius himself were 
quoted anonymously, " would neither recognize the 
author nor approve his doctrine. They would judge 
liim by the creed bearing his name, the sentiments of 
which are as difficult to reconcile with his genuine 

* " Anima hominis natura sua in se habet Ss. Trinitatis siimilacmm ; 
in se enim tria complectitur, Mentem, Intellectum, et Voluntatem: . . . 
cogitat, . . . percipit, . . . vult." — Bede, i. 8 ; copying, almost verbally, 
St. Augustine. 

t Hippolytus, vol. ii. p. 46, first edition. 



100 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 

works as its Latin terms are with his Greek language. 
Baron Bunsen may admire that creed as little as Jere- 
my Taylor* and Tillotson did, without necessarily 
contradicting tlie great Father to whom it is ascribed. 
Still more : as a philosopher, sitting loose to our Arti- 
cles, he may deliberately assign to the conclusions of 
councils a very subordinate value ; and taking his 
stand on the genuine words of Holy Scripture, and 
the immutable laws of God to the human mind, he 
may say, either the doctrine of the Trinity agrees with 
these tests, or, if you make it disagree, you make it 
false. If he errs in his speculation, he gives us in his 
critical researches the surest means of correcting his 
errors ; and his polemic is at least triumphant against 
those who load the Church with the conclusions of 
patristic thought, and forbid our thinking sufficiently 
to understand them. As the coolest heads at Trent 
said, " Take care, lest in condemning Luther, you con- 
demn St. Augustine ;" so, if our defenders of the faith 
would have men believe the doctrine of the Trinity, 
they had better not forbid metaphysics, or even sneer 
at Realism. 

The strong assertions in the " Hippolytus," concern- 
ing the freedom of the human will, may require some 
balance from the language of penitence and of prayer. 
They must be left here to comparison with the con- 
stant language of the Greek Church, with the doctrine 
of the first four centuries, with the schoolmen's prac- 
tical evasions of the Augustinian standard which they 
professed, and with the guarded but earnest protests 
and limitations of our own ethical divines, from Hooker 
and Jeremy Taylor to Butler and Hampden. 

* Liberty of Prophesying, pp. 491-2, vol. vii. ed. Heber. Burnet's Own 
Times. Letter from Tillotson at the end. 



I 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESE ARCHES. 101 

On the great hope of mankind, the immortality of 
the soul, the " Hippolytus " left something to be de- 
sired. It had a Brahmanical, rather than a Christian 
or Platonic sound. But the second volume of " Gott 
in der Geschichte " seems to imply, that, if the author 
recoils from the fleshly resurrection and Judaic mil- 
lennium of Justin Martyr, he still shares the aspira- 
tion of the noblest philosophers elsewhere, and of the 
firmer believers among ourselves, to a revival of con- 
scious and individual life, in such a form of immortal- 
ity as may consist with union with the spirit of our 
Eternal Life-giver. Remarkable in the same volume 
is the generous vindication of the first Buddhist Sakya 
against the misunderstandings which fastened on him 
a doctrine of atheism and of annihilation. The pene- 
trating prescience of Neander seems borne out on this 
point by genuine texts against the harsher judgment 
of recent Sanscrit scholars. He judged as a philos- 
opher ; and they, as grammarians. 

It would be difficult to say on what subject Baron 
Bunsen is not at home ; but none is handled by him 
with more familiar mastery than that of liturgies, 
ancient and modern. He has endeavored to enlarge 
the meagre stores of the Lutheran Church by a col- 
lection of evangelical songs and prayers.* Rich in 
primitive models, yet adapted to Lutheran habits, this 
collection might be suggestive to any Nonconformist 
congregations which desire to enrich or temper their 
devotions by the aid of common prayers. Even our 
own Church, though not likely to recast her ritual in a 
foreign mould, might observe with profit the greater 
calmness and harmony of the older forms, as compared 

=* Gesang- und Gebet-bucli. Hamburg, 1846. 



102 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEARCHES. 

with the amplifications which she has in some cases 
adopted. Our Litany is hardly equal to its germ ; nor 
do our collects exhaust available stores. Yet if it be 
one great test of a theology, that it shall bear to be 
prayed, our author has hardly satisfied it. Either rev- 
erence or deference may have prevented him from 
bringing his prayers into entire harmony with his 
criticisms ; or it may be that a discrepance, which we 
should constantly diminish, is likely to remain between 
our feelings and our logical necessities. It is not the 
less certain, that some reconsideration of the polem- 
ical element in our Liturgy, as of the harder scholasti- 
cism in our theology, would be the natural offspring 
of any age of research in which Christianity was free ; 
and if this, as seems but too probable, is to be much 
longer denied us, the consequence must be a lessening 
of moral strength within our pale, and an accession to 
influences which will not always be friendly. But to 
estrange our doctrinal teaching from the convictions, 
and our practical administration from the influence, 
of a Protestant laity, are parts of one policy, and that 
not always a blind one. Nor is doctrinal narrowness 
of view without practical counterpart in the rigidity 
which excludes the breath of prayer from our churches 
for six days in seven, rather than permit a clergyman 
to select such portions as devotion suggests and aver- 
age strength permits. 

It did not fall within the scope of this essay to 
define the extent of its illustrious subject's obliga- 
tions (which he would no doubt largely acknowl- 
edge) to contemporary scholars, such as Mr. Birch 
or others ; nor was it necessary to touch questions 
of ethnology and politics which might be raised by 
those who value Germanism so far as it is human, 



BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL RESEARCHES. 103 

rather than so far as it is German. Sclavonians 
might notice the scanty acknowledgment of the vast 
contributions of their race to the intellectual wealth 
of Germany.* Celtic scholars might remark, that 
triumph in a discovery which has yet to be proved, 
regarding the law of initial mutations in their lan- 
giiage, is premature. t Nor would they assent to our 
author's ethical description of their race. So, when 
he asks, " How long shall we bear this fiction of an 
external revelation ? " that is, of one violating the 
heart and conscience, instead of expressing itself 
through them : or when he says, " All this is delusion 
for those who believe it ; but what is it in the mouths 
of those who teach it ? " or when he exclaims, " Oh 
the fools ! who, if they do see the imminent perils 
of this age, think to ward them off by narrow-minded 
persecution ! " and when he repeats, "Is it not time, 
in truth, to withdraw the veil from our misery ; to 
tear off the mask from hypocrisy, and destroy that 
sham which is undermining all real ground under our 
feet ; to point out the dangers which surround, nay, 
threaten already to ingulf us ? " — there will be 
some who think his language too vehement for good 
taste. Others will think burning words needed by 
the disease of our time. They will not quarrel on 
points of taste with a man who in our darkest per- 
plexity has reared again the banner of truth, and 
uttered thoughts which give courage to the weak, 
and sight to the blind. If Protestant Europe is to 



* One might ask, whether the experience of our two latest wars encoui'- 
ages our looking to Germany for any unselfish sympathy with the rights of 
nations? or has she not rather earned the curse of MerozV 

t So the vaunted discovery of Professor Zeuss, deriving " Cymry " from 
an imaginary word, " Combroges," is against the testimony of the best 
Greek geographers. 



104 BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEAKCHES. 

escape those shadows of the twelfth century, which, 
with ominous recurrence, are closing round us, to 
Baron Bunsen will belong a foremost place among the 
champions of light and right. Any pohits disputable, 
or partially erroneous, which may be discovered in 
his many works, are as dust in the balance, compared 
with the mass of solid learning, and the elevating 
influence of a noble and Christian spirit. Those who 
have assailed his doubtful points are equally opposed 
to his strong ones. Our own testimony is, where we 
have been best able to follow him, we have generally 
found most reason to agree with him ; but our little 
survey has not traversed his vast field, nor our plum- 
met sounded his depth. 

Bunsen, with voice like sound of trumpet bom, 

Conscious of strength, and confidently bold, 
Well feign the sons of Loyola the scorn 

Which from thy books would scare their startled fold. 
To thee our Earth disclosed her purple morn, 

And Time his long-lost centuries unrolled; 
Far Realms unveiled the mystery of their tongues, 
Thou all their garlands on the Cross hast hung. 

My lips but ill could frame thy Lutheran speech. 
Nor suits thy Teuton vaunt our British pride: 

But, ah ! not dead my soul to giant reach, 
That envious Eld's vast interval defied; 

And when those fables strange, our hirelings teachj 
I saw by genuine learning cast aside, 

Even like Linnoeus kneeling on the sod. 

For faith from falsehood severed thank I God. 



NOTE ON BUNSEN'S BIBLICAL EESEARCHES. 



SixCE the Essay on Bunsen's " Biblical Kesearclies " was in type, 
two more parts of the " Bible for the People " have reached Eng- 
land. One includes a translation of Isaiah, but does not separate 
the distinguishable portions in the manner of Ewald, or with the 
freedom which the translator's criticisms would justify. The other 
part comprehends numerous dissertations on the Pentateuch, enter- 
ing largely on questions of its origin, materials, and interpretation. 
There seems not an entire consistency of detail in these disserta- 
tions, and in the views deducible from the author's " Egypt ; " but 
the same spirit, and breadth of treatment, pervade both. The 
analysis of the Levitical laws, by which the Mosaic germs are dis- 
tinguished from subsequent accretions, is of the highest interest. 
The ten plagues of Egypt are somewhat rationalistically handled, 
as having a true historical basis, but as explicable by natural phe- 
nomena, indigenous to Egypt in all ages. The author's tone upon 
the technical definition of miracles, as distinct from great marvels 
and wonders, has acquired a firmer freedom, and would be repre- 
sented by some among ourselves as "painfully sceptical." But 
even those who hesitate to follow the author in his details must be 
struck by the brilliant suggestiveness of his researches, which tend 
more and more, in proportion as they are developed, to justify the 
presentiment of their creating a new epoch in the science of biblical 
criticism. R. w. 



ON THE STUDY OP THE EVIDENCES 
OF CHRISTIANITY. 

By BADEN POWELL, M.A., F.E.S., &c. 

THE investigation of that important and extensive 
subject which inchides what have been usually 
designated as " The Evidences of Revelation," has 
prescriptively occupied a considerable space in the 
field of theological literature, especially as cultivated 
in England. There is scarcely one, perhaps, of our 
more eminent divines, who has not, in a greater or 
less degree, distinguished himself in this department ; 
and scarcely an aspirant for theological distinction 
who has not thought it one of the surest paths to 
that eminence, combining so many and varied motives 
of ambition, to come forward as a champion in this 
arena. At the present day, it might be supposed the 
discussion of such a subject, taken up as it has been 
successively in all its conceivable different bearings, 
must be nearly exhausted. It must, however, be 
borne in mind that, unlike the essential doctrines of 
Christianity, — "the same yesterday, to-day, and for- 
ever," — these external accessories constitute a subject 
which of necessity is perpetually taking somewhat, at 
least, of a new form with the successive phases of 
opinion and knowledge. And it thus becomes not an 
unsatisfactory nor unimportant object, from time to 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. lOT 

time, to review the condition in which the discussion 
stands, and to comment on the peculiar features which 
at any particular epoch it most prominently presents, 
as indicative of strength or weakness, — of the ad- 
vance and security of the cause, — if, in accordance 
with the real progress of enlightenment, its advocates 
have had the wisdom to rescind what better informa- 
tion showed defective, and to substitute views in ac- 
cordance with higher knowledge ; or, on the other 
hand, inevitable symptoms of weakness and ineffi- 
ciency, if such salutary cautions have been neglected. 
To oifer some general remarks of this kind on the 
existing state of these discussions will be the object 
of the present essay. 

Before proceeding to the main question, we may, 
however, properly premise a brief reflection on the 
spirit and temper in which it should be discussed. 
In writings on these subjects, it must be confessed, 
we too often find indications of a polemical acrimony 
on questions where a calm discussion of arguments 
would be more becoming, as well as more consistent 
with the proposed object ; the too frequent assump- 
tion of the part of the special partisan and ingenious 
advocate^ when the character to be sustained should 
be rather that of the unbiased judge ; too much of 
hasty and captious objection on the one hand, or 
of settled and inveterate prejudice on the other ; too 
strong a tendency not fairly to appreciate, or even 
to keep out of sight, the broader features of the main 
question, in the eagerness to single out particular 
salient points for attack ; too ready a disposition to 
triumph in lesser details, rather than steadily to grasp 
more comprehensive principles, and leave minor diffi- 
culties to await their solution, or to regard this or 



108 STUDY OF THE 

that particular argviment as if the entire credit of the 
cause were staked upon it. 

And if, on the one side, there is often a just com- 
plaint, that objections are urged in a manner and tone 
offensive to religious feeling and conscientious prepos- 
sessions, which are, at least, entitled to respectful con- 
sideration : so, on the other, there Is too often evinced 
a want of sympathy with the difficulties which many 
so seriously feel in admitting the alleged evidences, 
and which many habitual believers do not appreciate, 
perhaps because they have never thought or inquired 
deeply on the subject ; or, what is more, have believed 
it wrong and impious to do so. 

Any appeal to argument must imply perfect free- 
dom of conviction. It is a palpable absurdity to put 
reasons before a man, and yet wish to compel him to 
adopt them, or to anathematize him if he find them 
unconvincmg ; to repudiate him as an unbeliever, be- 
cause he is careful to find satisfactory grounds for his 
belief ; or to denounce him as a sceptic, because he is 
scrupulous to discriminate the truth ; to assert that 
his honest doubts evince a moral obliquity ; in a word, 
that he is no judge of his own mind ; while it is ob- 
viously implied that his instructor is so ; or, in other 
words, is omniscient and infallible. When serious 
difficulties have been felt and acknowledged on any 
important subject, and a writer undertakes the task 
of endeavoring to obviate them, it is but a fair de- 
mand, that if the reader be one of those who do not 
feel the difficulties, or do not need or appreciate any 
further argument to enlighten or support his belief, 
he should not cavil at the introduction of topics which 
may be valuable to others, though needless or distaste- 
ful to himself. Such persons are in no way called 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 109 

upon to enter into the discussion ; but they are unfair 
if they accuse those who do so of agitating questions 
of whose existence they have been unconscious, and 
of unsettlmg men's minds because their own prepos- 
sessions have been long settled, and they do not per- 
ceive the difficulties of others, which it is the very 
aim of such discussion to remove. 

Perhaps most of the various parties who have at all 
engaged m the discussion of these subjects are agreed 
in admitting a wide distinction between the influences 
of feeling and those of reason, the impressions of 
conscience and the deductions of intellect, the dic- 
tations of moral and religious sense and the conclu- 
sions from evidence, in reference especially to the 
questions agitated as to the grounds of belief in 
divine revelation. Indeed, when we take into ac- 
count the nature of the objects considered, the distinc- 
tion is manifest and undeniable ; when a reference is 
made to matters of external fact (insisted on as such), 
it is obvious that reason and intellect can alone be the 
proper judges of the evidence of such facts. When, 
on the other hand, the question may be as to points of 
moral or religious doctrine, it is equally clear, other 
and higher grounds of judgment and conviction must 
be appealed to. 

In the questions now under consideration, hath 
classes of arguments are usually involved. It is the 
professed principle of at least a large section of those 
who discuss the subject, that the question is materially 
connected with the truth and evidence of certain ex- 
ternal alleged historical facts ; while, again, all will 
admit that the most essential and vital portion of the 
inquiry refers to matters of a higher, of a more inter- 
nal, moral, and spiritual kind. 



110 STUDY OF THE 

But while this distinction is clearly implied, and 
even professedly acknowledged, by the disputants, it 
is worthy of careful remark, how extensively it is 
overlooked and kept out of sight in practice ; how 
commonly, almost universally, we find writers and 
reasoners taking up the question, even with much 
ability and eloquence, and arguing it out sometimes 
on the one, sometimes on the other ground, forgetful 
of their own professions, and in a way often quite 
inconsistent with them. 

Thus we continually find the professed advocates of 
an external revelation and historical evidence, never- 
theless making their appeal to conscience and feeling, 
and decrying the exercise of reason, and charging 
those who find critical objections in the evidence with 
spiritual blindness and moral perversity ; and, on the 
other hand, we observe the professed upholders of 
faith and internal conviction as the only sound basis 
of religion, nevertheless regarding the external facts 
as not less essential truth which it would be profane 
to question. It often seems to be rather the want of 
clear apprehension in the first instance of the distmct 
kind and character of such inquiries, when on the one 
side directed to the abstract question of evidence, and 
when on the other pointing to the practical object of 
addressing the moral and religious feelings and affec- 
tions, which causes so many writers on these subjects 
to betray an inconsistency between their professed 
purpose and their mode of carrying it out. They 
avow matter-of-fact inquiry, — a question of the criti- 
cal evidence for alleged events, — yet they pursue it 
as if it were an appeal to moral sentiments ; in which 
case it would be a virtue to assent, and a crime to 



EVIDENCES OF CHKISTIANITY. Ill 

deny : if it be the one, it should not be proposed as 
the other.. 

Thus it is the common language of orthodox writ- 
ings and discourses, to advise the believer, when ob- 
jections or difficulties arise, not to attempt to offer 
a precise answer or to argue the point, but rather to 
look at the whole subject as of a kind which ought 
to be exempt from critical scrutiny, and be regarded 
with a submission of judgment, in the spirit of humil- 
ity and faith. This advice may be very just in refer- 
ence to practical impressions ; yet, if the question 
be one (as is so much insisted on) of external facts, 
it amounts to neither more nor less than a tacit sur- 
render of the claims of external evidence and histori- 
cal reality. We are told that we ought to investigate 
such high questions rather with our affections than 
with our logic, and approach them rather with good 
dispositions and right motives, and with a desire to 
find the doctrine true ; and thus shall discover the 
real assurance of its truth in obeying it : suggestions 
which, however good in a moral and practical sense, 
are surely inapplicable if it be made a question of 
facts. 

If we were inquiring into historical evidence in any 
other case (suppose, e. g., of Caesar's landing in Brit- 
ain) , it would be little to the purpose to be told that 
we must look at the case through our desires, rather 
than our reason ; and exercise a believing disposition, 
rather than rashly scrutinize testimony by critical cav- 
ils. Those who speak thus on the question of relig- 
ious belief, in fact shift the basis of all belief from the 
alleged evidence of facts to the influence of an inter- 
nal persuasion : they virtually give up the evidential 
proof so strongly insisted on, and confess that the 



112 STUDY OF THE 

whole is, after all, a mere matter of feeling and sen- 
timent, just as much as those to whose views they 
so greatly object as openly avowing the very same 
thing. 

We find certain forms of expression commonly ster- 
eotyped among a very large class of divmes, when- 
ever a critical difficulty or a sceptical exception is 
urged, which are very significant as to the prevalent 
view of religious evidence. Their reply is always of 
this tenor : " These are not subjects on which you can 
expect demonstrative evidence : you must be satisfied 
to accept such general proof or probability as the na- 
ture of the question allows. You must not inquire 
too curiously into these things : it is sufficient that we 
have a general moral evidence of the doctrines. Exact 
critical discussion will always rake up difficulties ; to 
which, perhaps, no satisfactory answer can be at once 
given. A precise sceptical caviller will always find 
new objections as soon as the first are refuted. It is 
in vain to seek to convince reason, unless the con- 
science and the will be first well disposed to accept the 
truth." Such is the constant language of orthodox 
theologians. What is it but a mere translation into 
other phraseology of the very assertions of the scep- 
tical transcendentalist ? 

Indeed, with many who take up these questions, 
they are almost avowedly placed on the ground of 
practical expediency rather than of abstract truth. 
Good and earnest men become alarmed for the dan- 
gerous consequences they think likely to result from 
certain speculations on these subjects ; and thence, in 
arguing against them, are led to assume a tone of 
superiority, as the guardians of virtue and censors 
of right, rather than as unprejudiced inquirers into 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 113 

the matters of fact on which, nevertheless, they pro- 
fessedly make the case rest. And thus a disposition 
has been encouraged to regard any such question as 
one of right or ivrong-, rather than one of truth o? 
error ; to treat all objections as profane ; and to 
discard exceptions unanswered as shocking and im- 
moral. 

If, indeed, the discussion were carried on upon the 
professed ground of spiritual impression and relig 
ions feeling, there would be a consistency in such a 
course ; but, when evidential arguments are avowedly 
addressed to the intellect^ it is especially preposterous 
to shift the ground, and charge the rejection of them 
on moral motives ; while those who impute such bad 
motives fairly expose themselves to the retort, that 
their own behef may be dictated by other considera- 
tions than the love of truth. 

Again : in such inquiries there is another material 
distinction very commonly lost sight of, — the differ- 
ence between discussing the truth of a conclusion, 
or opinion, and the mode or means of arriving at it ; or 
the arguments by which it is supported. Either may 
clearly be impugned or upheld without implicating 
the other. We may have the best evidence, but 
draw a wrong conclusion from it ; or we may sup- 
port an incontestable truth by very fallacious argu- 
ments. 

The present discussion is not intended to be of a 
controversial kind : it is purely contemplative and 
theoretical. It is rather directed to a calm and unpre- 
judiced survey of the various opinions and arguments 
adduced, whatever may be their ulterior tendency, on 
these important questions ; and to the attempt to 
state, analyze, and estimate them, just as they may 

H 



114 STUDY OF THE 

seem really conducive to the high object professedly 
in view. 

The idea of a positive external divine revelation of 
some kind has formed the very basis of all hitherto 
received systems of Christian belief. The Romanist, 
indeed, regards that revelation as of the nature of a 
standing oracle, accessible in the living voice of the 
Church ; which, being infallible, of course sufficiently 
accredits all the doctrines it announces, and consti- 
tutes them divine. A more modified view has pre- 
vailed among a considerable section of Anglican theo- 
logians, who ground their faith on the same principles 
of Church authority, divested of its divine and infal- 
lible character. Most Protestants, with more or less 
difference of meaning, profess to regard revelation as 
once for all announced, long since finally closed, per- 
manently recorded, and accessible only in the written 
divine word contained in the Scriptures ; and the 
discussion with those outside the pale of belief has 
been entirely one as to the validity of those external 
marks and attestations by which the truth of the 
alleged fact of such communication of the Divine 
Will was held to be substantiated. 

The scope and character of the various discussions 
raised on "the evidences of religion" have varied 
much in different ages ; following, of course, both the 
view adopted of revelation itself, the nature of the 
objections which for the time seemed most prominent, 
or most necessary to be combated, and stamped with 
the peculiar intellectual character and reasoning tone 
of the age to which tliey belonged. 

The early apologists were rather defenders of the 
Christian cause generally ; but, when they entered on 
evidential topics, naturally did so rather in accordance 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 115 

with the prevalent modes of thought, than with what 
would now be deemed a philosophic investigation of 
alleged facts and critical appreciation of testimony in 
support of them. 

In subsequent ages, as the increasing claims of in- 
fallible Church authority gained ground, to discuss 
evidence became superfluous, and even dangerous and 
impious. Accordingly, of this branch of theological 
literature (unless in the most entire subjection to 
ecclesiastical dictation) the Mediaeval Church pre- 
sented hardly any specimens. 

It was not perhaps till the fifteenth century that 
any works, bearing the character of what are now 
called treatises on " the evidences," appeared ; and 
these were probably elicited by the sceptical spirit 
which had already begun to show itself, arising out 
of the subtilties of the schoolmen.* 

But in modern times, and under Protestant aus- 
pices, a greater disposition to follow up this kind of 
discussion has naturally been developed. The sterner 
genius of Protestantism required definition, argument, 
and proof, where the Ancient Church had been con- 
tent to impress by the claims of authority, veneration, 
and prescription, and thus left the conception of truth 
to take the form of a mere impression of devotional 
feeling or exalted imagination. 

Protestantism sought something more definite and 
substantial ; and its demands were seconded and sup- 
ported, m-ore especially by the spirit of metaphysical 
reasoning which so widely extended itself in the seven- 
teenth century, even into the domains of theology; 



* Several sucTi treatises are enumerated and described by Eichhorn. 
See Hallam's Lit. of Europe, i. p. 190. 



116 STUDY OF THE 

and divines, stirred up by the allegations of the Deists, 
aimed at formal refutations of their objections, by 
drawing out the idea and the proofs of revelation 
into systematic propositions supported by logical argu- 
ments. In that and the subsequent period, the same 
general style of argument on these topics prevailed 
among the advocates of the Christian cause. The 
appeal was mainly to the miracles of the Gospels ; and 
here, it was contended, we want merely the same tes- 
timony of eyewitnesses which would suffice to sub- 
stantiate any ordinary matter of fact. Accordingly, 
the narratives were to be traced to writers at the time, 
who were either themselves eyewitnesses, or recorded 
the testimony of those who were so ; and, the direct 
transmission of the evidence being thus established, 
everything was held to be demonstrated. If any ante- 
cedent question was raised, a brief reference to the 
Divine Omnipotence to work the miracles, and to the 
Divine Goodness to vouchsafe the revelation and con- 
firm it by such proofs, was all that could be required 
to silence sceptical cavils. 

It is true, indeed, that some consideration of the 
internal evidence derived from the excellence of the 
doctrines and morality of the gospel was allowed to 
enter the discussion ; but it formed only a subordinate 
branch of the evidences of Christianity. The main 
and essential point was always the consideration of 
external facts, and the attestations of testimony offered 
in suppoit of them. Assuming Christianity to be 
essentially connected with certain outward and sen- 
sible events, the main thing to be inquired into and 
established was the historical evidence of those events, 
and the genuineness of the records of them. If this 
were satisfactorily made out, then it was considered 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 117 

the object was accomplished. The external facts sim- 
ply substantiated, the intrinsic doctrines and declara- 
tions of the gospel must by necessary consequence be 
divine truths. 

If we compare the general tone, character, and pre- 
tensions of those works, which, in our scliools and 
colleges, have been regarded as the standard authori- 
ties on the subject of the " evidences," we must ac- 
knowledge a great change in the taste or opinions of 
the times, from the commencement of the last century 
to the present day ; which has led the student to turn 
from the erudite folios of Jackson and Stillingfleet, or 
the more condensed arguments of Clarke " On the 
Attributes," Grotius " De Yeritate," and Leslie's 
*' Method with the Deists," — the universal text-books 
of a past generation, — to the writings of Lardner 
and Paley ; the latter of whom, in the beginning of 
the present century, reigned supreme, the acknowl- 
edged champion of revelation, and the head of a 
school to which numerous others, as Campbell, "Wat- 
son, and Douglas, contributed their labors. But, more 
recently, these authors have been in an eminent de 
gree superseded by a recurrence to the once compara- 
tively neglected resources furnished by Bishop Butler, 
of so much less formal, technical, and positive a kind, 
yet offering wider and more philosophical views of 
the subject ; still, however, confessedly not supply- 
ing altogether that comprehensive discussion which 
is adapted to the peculiar tone and character of 
thought and existing state of knowledge in our own 
times. 

The state of opinion and information in different 
ages is peculiarly shown in the tone and character of 
those discussions which have continually arisen affect- 



118 STUDY OF THE 

ing the grounds of religious belief. The particular 
species of difficulty or objectiou in the reception of 
Christianity, and especially of its external manifesta- 
tions, which have been found most formidable, have 
varied greatly in different ages according to the prev- 
alent modes of thought and the character of the dom- 
inant philosophy. Thus the difficulties with respect 
to miraculous evidence in particular will necessarily 
be very differently viewed in different stages of phil- 
osophical and physical information. Difficulties in the 
idea of suspensions of natural laws, in former ages 
were not at all felt, canvassed, or thought of ; but, in 
later times, they have assumed a mucli deeper impor- 
tance. In an earlier period of our theological litera- 
ture, the critical investigation of the question of mira- 
cles was a point scarcely at all appreciated. The at- 
tacks of the Deists of the seventeenth and early part of 
the eighteenth century were almost wholly directed to 
other points : but the speculations of Woolston, and, 
still more, the subsequent influence of the celebrated 
Essay of Hume, had the effect of directing the atten- 
tion of divines more pointedly to the precise topic of 
miraculous evidence ; and to these causes was added 
the agitation of the question of the ecclesiastical mira- 
cles, giving rise to the semi-sceptical discussions of 
Middleton, which called forth a more exact spirit of 
examination into such distinctions as were needed to 
preserve the miracles of the Gospels from the criti- 
cisms applied to those of the Church. This distinc- 
tion, in fact, involves a large part of the entire ques- 
tion ; and, towards marking it out effectually, various 
precautionary rules and principles were laid down by 
several writers. Thus Bishop Warburton suggested 
as a criterion the necessity of the miracles to the ends 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIAMTY. 119 

of the dispensation,* which he conceived answered 
the demands of Middleton. Bishop Douglas made 
it the test, to connect miracles with inspiration in 
those who wrought them : this, he thought, would 
exclude the miracles of the Church. f 

But it was long since perceived that tlie argument 
from necessity of miracles is, at best, a very hazardous 
one ; since it implies the presumption of constituting 
ourselves judges of such necessity, and admits the 
fair objection. When were miracles more needed than 
at the present day to indicate the truth amid mani- 
fold error, or to propagate the faith ? And again : in 
the other case. How is the inspiration to be ascertained 
apart from the miracles ? or, if it be, what is the use 
of the miracles ? In fact, in proportion as external 
evidence to facts is made the professed demand, it 
follows that we can only recur to those grounds and 
rules by which the intellect always proceeds in the 
satisfactory investigation of any questions of fact and 
evidence, especially those of physical phenomena. 
By an adherence to those great principles on which 
all knowledge is acquired ; by a reference to the 
fixed laws of belief, and our convictions of established 
order and analogy, — we estimate the credibility of 
alleged events and the value of testimony, and weigh 
them more carefully in proportion as the matter may 
appear of greater moment or difficulty. 

In appreciating the evidence for any events of a 
striking or wonderful kind, we must bear in mind the 
extreme difficulty which always occurs in eliciting 
the truth, dependent not on the uncertainty in the 
transmission of testimony, but, even in cases where 

* Div. Leg., ix. 5. f Criterion, pp. 239, 241. 



120 STUDY OF THE 

we were ourselves witnesses, on the enormous influ- 
ence exerted by our prepossessions previous to the 
event, and by the momentary impressions consequent 
upon it. We look at all events through the medium 
of our prejudices ; or, even where we may have no 
prepossessions, the more sudden and remarkable any 
occurrence may be, the more unprepared we are to 
judge of it accurately or to view it calmly. Our after- 
representations, especially of any extraordinary and 
striking event, are always, at the best, mere recollec- 
tions of our impressions, of ideas dictated by our 
emotions at the time, of surprise and astonishment 
which the suddenness and hurry of the occurrence 
did not allow us time to reduce to reason, or to correct 
by the sober standard of experience or philosophy. 

Questions of this kind are often perplexed for want 
of due attention to the laws of human thought and 
belief, and of due distinction in ideas and terms. The 
proposition, " that an event may be so incredible, in- 
trinsically, as to set aside any degree of testimony," 
in no way applies to or affects the honesty or veracity 
of that testimony, or the reality of the impressions on 
the minds of the witnesses, so far as it relates to the 
matter of sensible fact simply. It merely means this: 
that, from the nature of our antecedent convictions, 
the probability of some kind of mistake or deception 
somewhere^ though we know not lohere^ is greater than 
the probability of the event really happening in the 
ivay and from the causes assigned. 

This, of course, turns on the general grounds of our 
antecedent convictions. The question agitated is not 
that of mere testimony, of its value, or of its failures. 
It refers to those antecedent considerations which must 
govern our entire view of the subject, and which, being 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 121 

dependent on higher laws of behef, must be paramount 
to all attestation^ or rather belong to a province dis- 
tinct from it. What is alleged is a case of the supernat- 
ural ; but no testimony can reach to the supernatural : 
testimony can apply only to apparent sensible facts ; 
testimony can only prove an extraordinary and perhaps 
inexplicable occurrence or phenomenon. That it is 
due to supernatural causes, is entirely dependent on 
the previous behef and assumptions of the parties. 

If, at the present day, any very extraordinary and 
unaccountable fact were exhibited before the eyes of 
an unbiased, educated, well-informed individual, and 
supposing all suspicion of imposture put out of the 
question, his only conclusion would be, that it was 
something he was unable at present to explain ; and, 
if at all versed in physical studies, he would not for 
an instant doubt, either that it was really due to some 
natural cause, or that, if properly recorded and ex- 
amined, it would at some future time receive its expla- 
nation by the advance of discovery. 

It is thus the prevalent conviction, that, at the pres- 
ent day, miracles are not to be expected ; and, conse- 
quently, alleged marvels are commonly discredited. 

But, as exceptions proving the rule, it cannot be 
denied, that, amid the general scepticism, instances 
sometimes occur of particular persons and parties, 
who, on peculiar grounds, firmly believe in the occur- 
rence of certain miracles even in our own times. But 
we invariably find that this is only in connection with 
their own particular tenets, and restricted to the com- 
munion to which they are attached. Such manifesta- 
tions, of course, are believed to have a religious ob- 
ject ; and afford to the votaries a strong confirma- 
tion of their belief, or are regarded as among the high 
6 



122 STUDY OF THE 

privileges vouchsafed to an earnest faith. Yet even 
such persons, almost as a matter of course, utterly dis- 
credit all such wonders alleged as occurring within 
the pale of any religion except their own ; while those 
of other communions as unhesitatingly reject the be- 
lief in theirs. 

To take a single instance : we may refer to the 
alleged miraculous ^' tongues " among the followers of 
the late Mr. Irving some years ago. It is not, and 
was not, a question of records or testimony ., or fallibility 
of witnesses, or exaggerated or fabulous narratives. 
At the time, the matter was closely scrutinized, and 
inquired into ; and many perfectly unprejudiced, and 
even sceptical persons, themselves witnessed the ef- 
fects, and were fully convinced, — as, indeed, were 
most candid inquirers at the time, — that, after all 
reasonable or possible allowance for the influence of 
delusion or imposture, beyond all question, certain 
extraordinary manifestations did occur. But just as 
little as the viere fact could be disputed, did any sober- 
minded person, except those immediately interested, 
or influenced hy peculiar views, for a moment believe 
those effects to be miraculous. Even granting that 
they could not be explained by any known form of 
nervous affection, or on the like physiological grounds ; 
still that they were in some way to be ascribed to 
natural causes, as yet perhaps little understood, was 
what no one of ordinarily cultivated mind or dispas- 
sionate judgment ever doubted. 

On such questions. we can only hope to form just 
and legitimate conclusions from an extended and un- 
prejudiced study of the laws and phenomena of the 
natural world. The entire range of the inductive 
philosophy is at once based upon, and in every in- 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 123 

stance tends to confirm by immense accumulation of 
evidence, the grand truth of the universal order and 
constancy of natural causes as a primary law of belief ; 
so strongly entertained and fixed in the mind of every 
truly inductive inquirer, that he can hardly even con- 
ceive the possibility of its failure. Yet we sometimes 
hear language of a different kind. There are still 
some who dwell on the idea of Spinoza, and contend 
that it is idle to object to miracles as violations of nat- 
ural laws, because we know not the extent of nature ; 
that all inexplicable phenomena are, in fact, miracles, 
or, at any rate, mysteries ; that we are surrounded by 
miracles in nature, and on all sides encoimter phe- 
nomena which baffle our attempts at explanation, and 
limit the powers of scientific investigation, — phenom- 
ena whose causes or nature we are not, and prob- 
ably never shall be, able to explain. 

Such are the arguments of those who have failed 
to grasp the positive scientific idea of the power of 
the inductive philosophy, or the order of nature. The 
boundaries of nature exist only where our present 
knowledge places them : the discoveries of to-morrow 
will alter and enlarge them. The inevitable progress 
of research must, within a longer or shorter period, 
unravel all that seems most marvellous ; and what is 
at present least understood will become as familiarly 
known to the science of the future, as those points 
which a few centuries ago were involved in equal 
obscurity, but are now thoroughly understood. 

None of these or the like instances are at all of the 
same kind, or have any characteristics in common with 
the idea of what is implied by the term '' miracle ; " 
which is asserted to mean something at variance with 
nature and law. There is not the slightest analogy 



124 STUDY OF THE 

between an unknown or inexplicable phenomenon 
and a supposed suspension of a known law : even an 
exceptional case of a known law is included in some 
larger law. Arbitrary interposition is wholly different 
in kind : no argument from the one can apply to the 
other. 

The enlarged critical and inductive study of the 
natural world cannot but tend powerfully to evince 
the inconceivablencss of imagined interruptions of 
natural order or supposed suspensions of the laws of 
matter, and of that vast series of dependent causation 
which constitutes the legitimate field for the investi- 
gation of science, whose constancy is tlie sole warrant 
for its generalizations, while it forms the substantial 
basis for the grand conclusions of natural theology. 
Such would be the grounds on which our convictions 
would be regulated as to marvellous events at the 
present day ; such the rules which we should apply to 
the like cases narrated in ordinary history. 

But though, perhaps, the more general admission, 
at the present day, of critical principles in the study of 
history, as well as the extension of physical knowl- 
edge, has done something to diffuse among the better 
informed class more enlightened notions on this sub- 
ject, taken abstractedly ; yet they may be still much 
at a loss to apply such principles in all cases, and 
readily conceive that there are possible instances in 
which large exceptions must be made. 

The above remarks may be admitted in respect to 
events at the present day and those narrated in ordi- 
nary history ; but it will be said, there may be and 
there are cases which are not like those of the present 
times nor of ordinary history. 

Thus, if we attempt any uncompromising, rigid 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 125 

scrutiny of the Christian miracles on the same 
grounds on which we should investigate any ordinary 
narrative of the supernatural or marvellous, we are 
stopped by the admonition, not to make an irreverent 
and profane intrusion into what ought to be held 
sacred, and exempt from such unhallowed criticism 
of human reason. 

Yet the champions of the " evidences " of Christi- 
anity have professedly rested the discussion of the mir- 
acles of the New Testament on the ground of precise 
evidence of witnesses ; insisting on the historical char- 
acter of the Gospel records, and urging the investiga- 
tion of the truth of the facts on the strict principles 
of criticism, as they would be applied to any other 
historical narrative. On these grounds, it would seem 
impossible to exempt the miraculous parts of those 
narratives from such considerations as those which 
must be resorted to in regard to marvellous or sup- 
posed supernatural events in general. Yet there 
seems an unwillingness to concede the propriety of 
such examination, and a disposition to regard this as 
altogether an exceptional case. But, in proportion as 
it is so regarded, it must be remembered, its strictly 
historical character is forfeited, or at least tampered 
with ; and those who would shield it from the criti- 
cisms to which history and fact are necessarily amen- 
able, cannot, in consistency, be offended at the alter- 
native involved, of a more or less mythical inter- 
pretation. 

In history, generally, our attention is often called to 
narratives of the marvellous ; and there is a sense in 
which they may be viewed with reference to its gen- 
eral purport, and in connection with those influences 
on human nature which play so conspicuous a part in 



126 STUDY OF THE 

many events. Thus it has been well remarked by 
Dean Milman : " History, to be true, must condescend 
to speak the language of legend. The belief of the 
times is part of the record of the times ; and, though 
there may occur what may baffle its more calm and 
searching philosophy, it must not disdain that which 
was the primal, almost universal, motive of human 
life." * 

Yet, in a more general point of view, when we con- 
sider the strict office of the critical historian, it is 
obvious that such cases are fair subjects of analysis, 
conducted with the view of ascertaining their real 
relation to nature and fact. 

From the general maxim, that all history is open to 
criticism as to its grounds of evidence, no professed 
history can be exempt, without forfeiting its historical 
character ; and, in its contents, what is properly his- 
torical, is, on the same grounds, fairly to be distin- 
guished from what may appear to be introduced on 
other authority and with other objects. Thus the 
general credit of an historical narrative does not ex- 
clude the distinct scrutiny into any statements of a 
supernatural kind which it may contain, nor super- 
sede the careful estimation of the value of the testi- 
mony on which they rest, — the directness of its trans- 
mission from eyewitnesses, as well as the possibility 
of misconception of its tenor, or of our not being in 
possession of all the circumstances on which a correct 
judgment can be formed. 

It must, however, be confessed, that the propriety 
of such dispassionate examination is too little appre- 
ciated, or the fairness of weighing well the improb- 

* Latin Christianit}-, vol. i. p. 388. 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 127 

abilities on one side against possible openings to 
misapprehension on the other. 

The nature of the laws of all human belief, and 
the broader grounds of probability and credibility of 
events, have been too little investigated ; and the 
great extent to which all testimony must be modified 
by antecedent credibility as determined by such gen- 
eral laws, too little commonly understood to be readily 
applied or allowed. 

Formerly, as before observed, there was no question 
as to general credibility ; but, in later times, the most 
orthodox seem to assume that interposition would be 
generally incredible, yet endeavor to lay down rules 
and criteria by which it may be rendered probable in 
cases of great emergency. Miracles were formerly the 
rule^ latterly the exception. 

The arguments of Middleton and others all assume 
the antecedent incredibility of miracles in general, in 
order to draw more precisely the distinction, that, in 
certain cases of a very special nature, that improba- 
bility may be removed, as in the case of authenticat- 
ing a revelation. Locke* expressly contends that it is 
the very extraordinary nature of such an emergency 
which renders an extraordinary interposition requisite, 
and therefore credible. 

The belief in divine interposition must be essentially 
dependent on what we previously admit or believe with 
respect to the divine attributes. 

It was formerly argued, that every Theist must ad- 
mit the credibility of miracles ; but this, it is now 
seen, depends on the nature and degree of his Theism, 
which may vary through many shades of opinion. It 

* Essay, book i. chap. xvi. § 13. 



128 STUDY OF THE 

depends, in fact, on the precise view taken of the 
divine attributes ; such, of course, as is attainable 
prior to our admission of revelation, or we fall into 
an argument in a vicious circle. The older writers 
on natural theology, indeed, have professed to deduce 
very exact conclusions as to the divine perfections, 
especially Omnipotence, — conclusions which, accord- 
ing to the physical argument already referred to, ap- 
pear carried beyond those limits to which reason or 
science are competent to lead us ; while, in fact, all 
our higher and more precise ideas of the divine per- 
fections are really derived from that very revelation 
whose evidence is the point in question. The Divine 
Omnipotence is entirely an inference /row the lang'uage 
of the Bible, adopted on the assumption of a belief in 
revelation. That " with God nothing is impossible," 
is the very declaration of Scripture : yet on this the 
whole belief in miracles is built ; and thus, with the 
many, that belief is wholly the result, not the antece- 
dent, of faith. 

But were these views of the divine attributes, on 
the other hand, ever so well established, it must be 
considered that the Theistic argument requires to be 
apphed with much caution ; since most of those, who 
have adopted such theories of the divine perfections 
on abstract grounds, have made them the basis of a 
precisely opposite belief; rejecting miracles altogether, 
on the plea, that our ideas of the divine perfections 
must directly discredit the notion of occasional inter- 
position ; that it is derogatory to the idea of Infinite 
Power and Wisdom to suppose an order of things so 
imperfectly established, that it must be occasionally 
interrupted and violated when the necessity of the 
case compelled, as the emergency of a revelation was 



E\^DEXCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 129 

imagined to do. But all such Tlieistic reasonings are 
but one-sided, and, if pushed further, must lead to a 
denial of all active operation of the Deity whatever, 
as inconsistent with unchangeable, infinite perfection.* 
Such are the arguments of Theodore Parker,f who 
denies miracles because " everywhere I find law the 
constant mode of operation of an infinite God; " or 
that of Wegsclieider,f that the belief in miracles is 
irreconcilable with the idea of an eternal God consist- 
ent with himself, <fcc. 

Paley's grand resource is, " Once believe in a God, 
and all is easy." Now, no men have evinced a more 
deep-seated and devout belief in the divine perfections 
than the writers just named, or others differing from 
them by various shades of opinion ; as the late J. 
Sterling, Mr. Emerson, and Prof. F. W. Newman. 
Yet these writers have agreed in the inference, that 
the entire view of Tlieistic principles, in their highest 
spiritual purity, is utterly at variance with all concep- 
tion of suspensions of the laws of nature, or with the 
idea of any kind of external manifestation addressed 
to the senses, as overruling the higher, and, as they 
conceive, sole worthy and fitting convictions of moral 
sense and religious intuition. 

We here speak impartially and disinterestedly, since 
we are far from agreeing in their reasonings, or even 
their first principles ; but we think it deeply incum- 
bent on all, who would fairly reason out the case of 
miraculous evidence at the present day, to give a full 
and patient discussion to this entire class of arguments 
which now command so many adherents. 

* See Mansel, Bampt. Lect., p. 185. f Theism, &c.,p. 263, comp. p. 113. 

X " Persuasio de supernatural! et miraculosa eademque imraediata Dei 
revelatione, baud bene conciliari videtur cum idea Dei jeterni, semper sibi 
constantis," «Scc. — Wegscheider, InsUt. Theol, § 12. 

6* I 



130 STUDY OF THE 

In advancing from the argument for miracles to 
the argument from miracles, it sliould, in the first 
instance, be considered that the evidential force 
of miracles (to whatever it -may amount) is wholly 
relative to the apprehensions of the parties ad- 
dressed. 

Thus, in an " evidential " point of view, it by no 
means follows, supposing we at this day were able 
to explain what in an ignorant age was regarded as 
a miracle, that therefore that event was not equally 
evidential to those immediately addressed. Colum- 
bus's prediction of the eclipse to the native island- 
ers was as true an argument to them as if the event 
had really been supernatural. 

It is a consideration adopted by some eminent di- 
vines, that, in the very language of the Gospels, the 
distinction is always kept up between mere "won- 
ders" {rkpara) and "miracles" or "signs" (ar^fieia)', 
that is to say, the latter were occurrences not viewed 
as mere matters of wonder or astonishment, but re- 
garded as mdications of other truths, specially adapted 
to convince those to whom they were addressed in 
their existing stage of enlightenment. 

Archbishop Whately, besides dwelling on this dis- 
tinction, argues that " the apostles would not only 
not have been believed, but not even listened to, if 
they had not first roused merCs attention by working, 
as we are told they did, special (remarkable) mira- 
cles." * (Acts xix. 11.) 

Some have gone further, and have considered the 
application of miracles as little more than is expressed 
in the ancient proverb, Oavjiara fMcopoc^;, — which is 

* Lessons on Evidences, vii. § 5. 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 131 

supposed to be nearly equivalent to the rebuke, '' An 
evil generation seeketh a sign," &c.* (Matt. xii. 38.) 

Sclileiermaclier regards the miracles as only rela- 
tively or apparently such to the apprehensions of the 
age. By the Jews, we know such manifestations, es- 
pecially the power of healing, were held to consti- 
tute the distinctive marks of the Messiah, according 
to the prophecies of their Scriptures. Signs of an 
improper or irrelevant kind were refused ; and even 
those which were granted were not necessarily nor 
universally conclusive. With some they were so ; but 
with the many the case was different. The Pharisees 
set down the miracles of Christ to tiie power of evil 
spirits ; and in other cases no conviction f was pro- 
duced, not even on the apostles. J Even Nicodemus, 
notwithstanding his logical reasoning, was but half 
convinced : while Jesus himself, especially to his dis- 
ciples in private, referred to his works as only sec- 
ondary and subsidiary to the higher evidence of 
his character and doctrine ; § which was so conspic- 
uous and convincing, even to his enemies, as to draw 
forth the admission, " Never man spake like this 
man." 

The later Jews adopted the strange legend of the 
" Sepher Toldeth Yehsu " (" Book of the Generation 
of Jesus "), which describes his miracles substantially 
as in. the Gospels, but says that he obtained his power 
by hiding himself in the Temple, and possessing him- 
self of the secret ineffable name, by virtue of which 
such wonders could be wrought. || 



* Letter and Spirit, bv Eev. J. Wilson, 1852, p. 21. 
t As, e. .9., John xi. 46 ; vi. 2 - 30. Matt. xii. 39. 
i !Matt. xvi. 9. Luke xxiv. 21-25. § John xiv. 11. 

II Orobio, a Jewish writer, quoted by Limborch (De Verit, pp. 12-156), 
observes : " Non crediderunt Judsi non quia opera ilia quae in Evangelic 



132 STUDY OF THE 

All moral evidence must essentially have respect 
to the parties to be convinced. " Signs " might be 
adapted peculiarly to the state of moral or intellect- 
ual progress of one age, or one class of persons, and 
not be suited to that of others. With the contem- 
poraries of Christ and the apostles, it was not a 
question of testimony or credibility : it was not the 
mere occurrence of what they all regarded as a su- 
pernatural event, as such, but the particular character 
to be assigned to it, which was the point in question. 
And it is to the entire diiference in the ideas, prepos- 
session, modes, and grounds of belief in those times, 
that we may trace the reason why miracles, which 
would be incredible now, were not so in the age and 
under the circumstances in which they are stated to 
have occurred. 

The force and function of all moral evidence is 
nullified and destroyed, if we seek to apply that kind 
of argument which does not find a response in the 
previous views or impressions of the individual ad- 
dressed. All evidential reasoning is essentially an 
adaptation to the conditions of mind and thought of 
the parties addressed, or it fails in its object. An 
evidential appeal, which in a long-past age was con- 
vincing as made to the state of knowledge in that age, 
might have not only no effect, but even an injurious 
tendency, if urged in the present, and referring to 
what is at variance with existing scientific concep- 
tions ; just as the arguments of the present age would 
have been unintelligible to a former. 

narrantur a Jesu facta esse negabant, sed quia iis se persuader! non sunt 
passi ut Jesuin crederent Messiam." Celsus ascribed tbe Christian mira- 
cles to magic (Origen cont. Cels., i. 38; ii. 9), as Julian did tliose of St. 
Paul to superior knowledge of nature (Ap. Cyr., iii. 100). The general 
charge of magic is noticed by Tertullian, Ap. 23. See also Dean Lyall, 
Propadia Prophetica, 439 ; Keander, Hist. i. 67. 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 133 

In his earlier views of miracles, Dr. J. H. Newman * 
maintained (agreeing therein with Paulus and Rosen- 
miiller) that most of the Christian miracles could only 
be evidential at the time they were wrought, and are 
not so at present ; a view in which a religious writer 
of a very different school, Athanase Coquerel,f seems 
to concur, alleging that they can avail only in found- 
ing a faith, not in preserving it. 

This was also the argument of several of the re- 
formers ; as Luther, Huss, and others J have reason- 
ably contemplated the miracles as a part of the peculi- 
arities of the first outward manifestation and develop- 
ment of Christianity : like all other portions of the 
divine dispensations, specially adapted to the age and 
the condition of those to whom they were immediately 
addressed ; but restricted apparently to those ages, 
and, at any rate, not in the same form continued to 
subsequent times, when the application of them would 
be inappropriate. 

The force of the appeal to miracles must ever be 
essentially dependent on the preconceptions of the 
parties addressed. Yet, even in an age or among a 
people entertaining an indiscriminate belief in the 
supernatural, the allegation of particular miracles as 
evidential may be altogether vain : the very extent of 
their belief may render it ineffective in furnishing 
proofs to authenticate the communications of any 
teacher as a divine message. The constant belief in 
the miraculous may neutralize all evidential distinc- 
tions which it may be attempted to deduce. Of this 
we have a striking instance on record, in the labors 



* Essay on Miracles, &c., p. 107. 

t Christianity, &c., Davison's translation, 1847, p. 226. 

% See Seckendorf 's Hist. Luther, iii. 633. 



134 STUDY OF THE 

of the missionary, Henry Martyn, among the Persian 
Mahometans. They believed readily all that he told 
them of the Scripture miracles, but directly paralleled 
them by wonders of their own. They were proof 
against any argument from the resurrection, because 
they held that their own sheiks had the power of 
raising the dead. 

It is also stated, that the later Jewish Rabbis, on 
the same plea that miracles were believed to be 
wrought by so many teachers of the most different 
doctrines, denied their evidential force altogether.* 

By those who take a more enlarged survey of the 
subject, it cannot fail to be remarked how different 
has been the spirit in which miracles were con- 
templated, as they are exhibited to us in the earlier 
stages of ecclesiastical literature, from that in which 
they have been regarded in modern times ; and this 
especially in respect to that particular view which 
has so intimately connected them with precise " evi- 
dential arguments," and by a school of writers, of 
whom Paley may be taken as the type, and who 
regard them as the sole external proof and certificate 
of a divme revelation. 

But, at the present day, this " evidential " view of 
miracles as the sole, or even the principal, external 
attestation to the claims of a divine revelation, is 
a species of reasoning which appears to have lost 
ground even among the most earnest advocates of 
Christianity. It is now generally admitted that Paley 
took too exclusive a view in asserting that we cannot 
conceive a revelation substantiated in any other way ; 
and it has been even more directly asserted by some 

* For some instances of this class of objections, see Dean Lyall's Pro- 
p»dia Prophetica, p. 437, et seq. 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 135 

zealous supporters of Christian doctrine, that the 
external evidences are altogether inappropriate and 
worthless. 

Thus, by a school of writers of the most highly 
orthodox pretensions, it is elaborately argued to the 
effect that revelation ought to be believed, though 
destitute of strict evidence, either internal or exter- 
nal, and though we neither see it nor know it.* And 
again: "We must be as sure that the bishop is Christ's 
appointed representative, as if we actually saw him 
work miracles as St. Peter and St. Paul did." f 
Another writer of the same school exclaims, "As if 
evidence to the word of God were a thing to be tol- 
erated by a Christian, except as an additional con- 
demnation for those who reject it, or as a sort of 
exercise and indulgence for a Christian understand- 
ing ! " J Thus, while the highest section of Anglican 
orthodoxy does not hesitate openly to disavow the old 
e^ddential argument, referring everything to the au- 
thority of the Church, the more moderate virtually 
discredit it by a general tone of vacillation between 
the antagonistic claims of reason and faith, — intui- 
tion and evidence ; while the extreme " evangelical " 
school, strongly asserting the literal truth of the Bible, 
seeks its evidence wholly in spiritual impressions, re- 
garding all exercise of the reason as partaking in the 
nature of sin. But, even among less prejudiced think- 
ers, we find indications of similar views. § Thus a very 
able critic, writing in express defence of the Christian 
cause, speaks of that " accumulation of historical testi- 
monies" "which the last age erroneously denominated 
the evidences of Christianity." And the poet Cole- 

* See Tracts for the Times, No. Ixxxv. pp. 85 - 100. f Tract No. x. p. 4. 
} British Critic, No. xlviii. p. 304. § Edin. Keview, No. cxli. 



136 STUDY OF THE 

ridge, — than whom no writer has been more earnest 
in upholding and defending Christianity, even in its 
most orthodox form, — in speaking of its external at- 
testations, impatiently exclaims, " Evidences of Chris- 
tianity ! I am weary of the word. Make a man feel 
the want of it, . . . and you may safely trust it to 
its own evidence." * 

But still further : Paley's well-known conclusion to 
the fifth book of his " Moral Philosophy," pronounced 
by Dr. Parr to be the finest prose passage in English 
literature ; more especially his final summing-up of 
the evidential argument in the words, " He alone dis- 
covers, who proves ; and no man can prove this point 
[a future retribution], but the teacher who testifies 
by miracles that his doctrine comes from God," — 
calls forth from Coleridge an emphatic protest against 
the entire principle, as being at variance with that 
moral election which he would make the essential 
basis of religious belief ; f to which he adds, in an- 
other place, " The cordial admiration with which I 
peruse the preceding passage as a masterpiece of com- 
position, would, could I convey it, serve as a measure 
of the vital importance I attach to the convictions 
which impelled me to animadvert on the same pas- 
sage as doctrine. "J 

Some of the most strenuous assertors of miracles 
have been foremost to disclaim the notion of their 
being the sole certificate of divine communication, and 
have maintained that the true force of the Christian 
evidences lies in the union and combination of the 
external testimony of miracles with the internal ex- 
cellence of. the doctrine ; thus, in fact, practically 

* Aids to Reflection, i. p. 333. f lb., p. 278. J lb., p. 338. 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 13T 

making the latter the real test of the admissihility of 
the former. 

The necessity for sucli a combination of the evidence 
of miracles with the test of the doctrine mculcated, is 
acknowledged in the Bible, both under the old and 
the new dispensations. We read of false prophets 
who might predict signs and wonders, which might 
come to pass ; but this was to be of no avail if they 
led their hearers " after other gods." * 

In like manner, " if an angel from heaven," preached 
any other gospel to the Galatians, they were to reject 
it ; f and, even according to Christ's own admonitions, 
false Christs and false prophets should show signs and 
wonders, such as might " deceive, if possible, the very 
elect." X 

According to this view, the main ground of the 
admissibility of external attestations is the worthiness 
of their object, — the doctrine : its unworthiness will 
discredit even the most distinctly alleged apparent 
miracles ; and such worthiness or unworthiness ap- 
peals solely to our moral judgment. 

No man has dwelt more forcibly on miraculous 
evidence than Archbishop Whately ; yet, in relation 
to the character of Christ as conspiring with the ex- 
ternal attestations of his mission, he strongly remarks 
(speaking of some who would ascribe to Christ an 
unworthy doctrine, an equivocal mode of teaching), 
" If I could believe Jesus to have been gTiilty of such 
subterfuges, ... I not only could not acknowledge 
him as sent from God, but should reject him with the 
deepest moral indignation." § 

Dean Lyall enters largely into this important quali- 

* Deut. xiii. 1. t Gal. i. 8. % Matt. xxiv. 24. 

§ Kingdom of Christ, Essay i. § 12. 



138 STUDY OF THE 

ficatioii in his defence of the miraculous argument ; 
applying it in the most unreserved manner to the 
ecclesiastical miracles,* which he rejects at once as 
having no connection with doctrine. We have also 
on record the remark of Dr. Johnson : " Why, sir, 
Hume, taking the proposition simply, is right ; but 
the Christian revelation is not proved by miracles 
alone, but as connected with prophecies and with 
the doctrines in confirmation of which miracles were 
wrought." f 

This has, indeed, been the common argument of 
the most approved divines : it is that long ago urged 
by Dr. S. Clarke, if and recently supported by Dean 
Trench. § Yet what is it but to acknowledge the 
right of an appeal, superior to that of all miracles, 
to our own moral tribunal, — to the principle, that 
" the human mind is competent to sit in moral and 
spiritual tribunal on a professed revelation ? " — in 
virtue of which. Prof. F. Newman, as well as many 
other inquu'crs, have come to so very opposite a con- 
clusion. 

Again, it has been strongly urged by the last-named 
writer, if miracles are made the sole criterion, then 
amid the various difficulties attending the scrutiny of 
evidence and the detection of imposture, an advantage 
is clearly given to the shrewd sceptic over the simple- 
minded and well-disposed disciple, utterly fatal to the 
purity of faith. II 

The view of miraculous evidence which allows it 
to be taken only in connection with, and, in fact, in 
subserviency to, the moral and internal proof derived 



=* Propsedia Prophetica, p. 441. j Bos-well's Life, iii. 169; ed. 1826. 

t Evidences of Natural and Revealed Eeligiou, § xiv. 

§ Notes on Miracles, p. 27. || See Phases of Faith, p. 154. 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 139 

from the character of the doctrine, has been pushed 
to a greater extent by the writer last named ; who 
asks, What is the value of " faith at second-hand ? " 
Ought any external testimony to overrule internal 
conviction ? Ought any moral truth to be received in 
mere obedience to a miracle of sense ? * and observes, 
that a miracle can only address itself to our external 
senses, and that internal and moral impressions must 
be deemed of a kind paramount to external and sen- 
sible. 

K it be alleged that this internal sense may be 
delusive, not less so, it is replied, may the external 
senses deceive us as to the world of sense and exter- 
nal evidence. The same author, however, expressly 
allows, that the claims of " the historical " and " the 
spiritual," the proofs addressed to " reason " and to 
the " internal sense," may each be properly enter- 
tained in their respective provinces : the danger lies 
in confounding them, or mistaking the one for the 
other. 

Even in the estimation of external evidence, every- 
thing depends on our preliminary moral convictions, 
and upon deciding, in the first instance, whether, on 
the one hand, we are " to abandon nioral conviction 
at the bidding of a miracle," or, on the other, to make 
conformity with moral principles the sole test both of 
the evidences and of the doctrines of revelation. 

In point of fact, he contends that the main actual 
appeal of the apostles, especially of St. Paul, was not 
to outward testimony or logical argument, but to 
spiritual assurances ; that, even when St. Paul does 
enter on a sort of evidential discussion, his reasoning 
is very unlike what a Paley would have exacted ; 

* See Phases of Faith, pp. 82, 108, 201, 1st ed. 



140 STUDY OF THE 

that all real evidence is of the spirit, which alone 
can judge of spiritual things ; that the apostles did 
not go about proclaiming an infallible book, but the 
convert was to be convinced by his own internal judg- 
ment, not called on to resign it to a systematized and 
dogmatic creed. And, altogether^ the reasoning of the 
apostles (wherever they enter upon the department of 
reasoning) was not according to our logic, but only in 
accordance vsdth the knowledge and philosophy of the 
age. 

Thus, in this fundamental assumption of internal 
evidence, some of the most orthodox writers are, in 
fact, in close agreement with those nominally of a very 
opposite school. 

It was the argument of Doderlein, that " the truth 
of the doctrine does not depend on the miracles, but 
we must first be convinced of the doctrine by its in- 
ternal evidence." 

De Wette and others, of the rationalists, expressly 
contend, that the real evidence of the divinity of any 
doctrine can only be its accordance with the dicta- 
tions of this moral sense ; and this, Wegscheider fur- 
ther insists, was, in fact, the actual appeal of Christ in 
his teaching.* 

In a word, on this view it would follow, that 
all external attestation would seem superfluous if it 
concur with, or to be rejected if it oppose, these 
moral convictions.f Thus a considerable school have 



* " Jesus ipse doctriiiam quam tradidit divinam esse professus est, quan- 
tum divina ejus indoles ab homine vere reliojioso proboque bene cognosci 
potest atque dijudicari." — Wenjscheider, in Juh. vii. 17. 

" Nulla alia ratio et via eas [doctrinas] examinaiidi datur quam ut ilia- 
rum placita cum iis quas via natural! rectae rationis de Deo ejiisque volun- 
late ipsi innotuerint diligenter componat et ad normam sine omni supersti- 
tions examinet." — Wegscheider, Jnstit. Theol. Chris. Dogm., § 11, p. 38. 

t Such was the argument of the Characteristics, vol. ii. p. 334, ed. 1727. 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 141 

been disposed to look to the intrinsic evidence only, 
and to accept the declarations of the gospel solely on 
the ground of their intrinsic excellence, and accord- 
ance with our best and highest moral and religious 
convictions ; a view which would approach very nearly 
to rejecting its peculiarities altogether. 

Thus considerations of a very different nature are 
now introduced from those formerly entertained, and 
of a kind which affect the entire primary conception 
of " a revelation " and its authority, and not merely 
any alleged external attestation of its truth. Thus 
any discussion of the '' evidences " at the present day 
must have a reference equally to the influence of the 
various systems, whether of ancient precedent or of 
modern illumination, which so widely and powerfully 
affect the state of opinion or belief. 

In whatever light we regard the " evidences " of 
religion, to be of any effect, whether external or 
internal, they must always have a special reference 
to the peculiar capacity and apprehension of the party 
addressed. Points which may be seen to involve the 
greatest difficulty to more profound inquirers are 
often such as do not occasion the least perplexity to 
ordinary minds, but are allowed to pass without hesi- 
tation. To them, all difficulties are smoothed down ; 
all objections (if for a moment raised) are at once 
answered by a few plausible, commonplace generali- 
ties, which, to their minds, are invested with the 
force of axiomatic truths, and to question which they 
would regard as at once idle and impious. 

On the other hand, exceptions held forth as fatal 
by the shallow caviller are seen by the more deeply 
reflecting in all their actual littleness and fallacy. 
But for the sake of all parties at the present day, 



142 STUDY OF THE 

especially those who at least profess a disposition for 
pursuing the serious discussion of such momentous 
subjects, it becomes imperatively necessary that such 
views of it should be suggested as may be really 
suitable to better-informed minds, and may meet the 
increasing demands of an age pretending, at least, to 
greater enlightenment. 

Those who have reflected most deeply on the na- 
ture of the argument from external evidence will 
admit, that it would naturally possess very different de- 
grees of force as addressed to diffv3rent ages ; and, in 
a period of advanced physical knowledge, the refer- 
ence to what was believed in past times, if at vari- 
ance with principles now acknowledged, could afford 
little ground of appeal ; in fact, would damage the 
argument rather than assist it. 

Even some of the older writers assign a much lower 
place to the evidence of miracles; contrasting it with 
the conviction of real faith, as being merely a prepara- 
tory step to it. Thus an old divine observes, " Ad- 
ducuntur primum ratione exteri ad fidem, et quasi 
praeparantur ; . . . . signis ergo et miraculis via fidei 
per sensus et rationem sternitur."* 

And here it should be especially noticed, as charac- 
teristic of the ideas of his age, that this writer classes 
the sensible evidence of miracles along with the con- 
victions of reason, — the very opposite to the view 
which would now be adopted, indicative of the differ- 
ence in physical conceptions, which connects miracles 
rather with faith as they are seen to be inconceivable 
to reason. 

These prevalent tendencies in the opinions of the 

* Melchior Canus, Loci. Theol., ix. 6, about 1540. 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 143 

age cannot but be regarded as connected with the 
increasing admission of those broader views of phys- 
ical truth and universal order in nature which have 
been folio v\^ed out to higher contemplations, and point 
to the acknowledgment of an overruling and all-per- 
vading Supreme Intelligence. 

In advancing beyond these conclusions to the doc- 
trines of revelation, we must recognize both the due 
claims of science to decide on points properly belong- 
ing to the world of matter^ and the independence of 
such considerations which characterizes the disclosure 
of spiritual truth, as such. 

All reason and science conspire to the confession, 
that, beyond the domain of physical causation and the 
possible conceptions of intellect or knoivledge, there 
lies open the boundless region of spiritual things, 
which is the sole dominion of faith ; and while in- 
tellect and philosophy are compelled to disown the 
recognition of anything in the world of matter at va- 
riance with the first principle of the laws of matter, — 
the universal order and indissoluble unity of physical 
causes, — they are the more ready to admit the higher 
claims of divine mysteries in the invisible and spirit- 
ual world. Advancing knowledge, while it asserts the 
dominion of science in physical things, confirms that 
of faith in spiritual : we thus neither impugn the 
generalizations of philosophy, nor allow them to in- 
vade the dominion of faith, and admit that what is 
not a subject for a problem may hold its plaee in a 
creed. 

In an evidential point of view, it has been admitted 
by some of the most candid divines, that the appeal 
to miracles, however important in the early stages of 
the gospel, has become less material in later times ; 



144 STUDY OF THE 

and others have even expressly pointed to this as the 
reason why they have been withdrawn : whilst, at the 
present day, the most earnest advocates of evangelical 
faith admit that outward marvels are needless to spir- 
itual conviction, and triumph in the greater moral 
miracle of a converted and regenerate soul. 

They echo the declaration of St. Chrysostom, " If 
you are a believer as you ought to be, and love Christ 
as you ought to love him, you have no need of mira- 
cles ; for these are given to unbelievers." * 

After all, the evidential argument has but little act- 
ual weight with the generality of believers. The high 
moral convictions, often referred to for internal evi- 
dence, are, to say the least, probably really felt by very 
few, and the appeal made to miracles as proofs of 
revelation by still fewer. A totally different feeling 
actuates the many ; and the spirit of faith is acknowl- 
edged where there is little disposition to reason at all, 
or where moral and philosophical considerations are 
absolutely rejected on the highest religious grounds, 
and everything referred to the sovereign power of 
divine grace. 

Matters of clear and positive fact, investigated on 
critical grounds and supported by exact evidence, are 
properly matters of knowledge, not of faith. It is 
rather in points of less definite character that any ex- 
ercise of faith can take place ; it is rather with matters 
of religious belief, belonging to a higher and less con- 
ceivable class of truths, with the mysterious things of 

the unseen world, that faith owns a connection, and 

^ jl 

* . . 61 yap TTLCTTos ei wj elvai XPI '^^^ (jn^els tov XpLcrrov cos 
(^tXfTi/ Sfi, oi ;(pf tav e;(fiy TOiv arjixeioirj ' ravTa yap aniaTois deborai. 
— Horn, xxiii. in Joltan. To the Paine effect also S. Isidore: "Tunc opor- 
tebat mundura miraculis credere, — nunc vero credentem oportet bonis 
operibus coruscare;" cited in Huss, in defence of Wickliff. 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 145 

more readily associates itself with spiritual ideas, than 
with external evidence or physical events : and it is 
generally admitted, that many points of important re- 
ligious instruction, even conveyed under the form of 
fictions, — as in the instances of doctrines inculcated 
through parables, — are more congenial to the spirit 
of faith than any relations of historical events could 
be. 

The more knowledge advances, the more it has 
been, and will be, acknowledged that Christianity, as 
a real religion, must be viewed apart from connection 
with physical things. 

The first dissociation of the spiritual from the phys- 
ical was rendered necessary by the palpable contra- 
dictions disclosed by astronomical discovery with the 
letter of Scripture. Another still wider and more 
material step has been effected by the discoveries 
of geology. More recently, the antiquity of the hu- 
man race and the development of species, and the 
rejection of the idea of " creation," have caused new 
advances in the same direction. 

In all these cases, there is, indeed a direct discrep- 
ancy between what had been taken for revealed truth 
and certain undeniable existing monuments to the 
contrary. 

But these monuments were interpreted by science 
and reason ; and there are other deductions of science 
and reason referring to alleged events, which, though 
they have left no monuments or .permanent effects 
behind them, are not the less legitimately subject to 
the conclusions of positive science, and require a 
similar concession and recognition of the same princi- 
ple of the independence of spiritual and of physical 
truth. 

7 J 



146 STUDY OF THE 

Thus far, our observations are general ; but, at the 
present moment, some recent publications on the sub- 
ject seem to call for a few more detailed remarks. We 
have before observed, that the style and character of 
works on " the evidences" has, of necessity, varied in 
different ages. Those of Leslie and Grotius have, by 
common consent, been long since superseded by that 
of Paley. Paley was long the text-book at Cambridge : 
his work was never so extensively popular at Oxford ; 
it has of late been entirely disused there. By the 
public at large however once accepted, we do not 
hesitate to express our belief, that, before another 
quarter of a century has elapsed, it will be laid on the 
shelf with its predecessors : not that it is a work des- 
titute of high merit, — as is pre-eminently true also of 
those it superseded, and of others again anterior to 
them, — but they have all followed the irreversible 
destiny, that a work, suited to convince the public 
mind at any one particular period, must be accommo- 
dated to the actual condition of knowledge, of opinion, 
and mode of thought, of that period. It is not a ques- 
tion oi abstract excellence^ but oi relative adaptation. 

Paley caught the prevalent tone of thought in his 
day. Public opinion has now taken a different turn ; 
and, what is more important, the style and class of 
difficulties and objections honestly felt has become 
wholly different. New modes of speculation — new 
forms of scepticism — have invaded the domain of tliat 
settled belief which a past age had been accustomed 
to rest on the Palcyan syllogism. Yet, among several 
works which have of late appeared on the subject, we 
recognize few which at all meet these requirements 
of existing opinion. Of some of the chief of these 
works, even appearing under the sanction of eminent 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 147 

names, we are constrained to remark, that tliey are 
altogether behmd the age ; that, amid much learned 
and acute remark on matters of detail, those material 
points on which the modern difficulties chiefly turn, 
as well as the theories advanced to meet them, are, for 
the most part, not only ignored, and passed over with- 
out examination or notice, but the entire school of 
those writers, who, with infinitely varied shades of 
view, have dwelt upon these topics, and put forth 
their attempts — feeble or powerful, as the case may 
be — to solve the difficulties, to improve the tone of 
discussion, to reconcile the difficulties of reason with 
the high aspirations and demands of faith, are all in- 
discriminately confounded in one common category of 
censure ; their views dismissed with ridicule as sophis- 
tical and fallacious, abused as infinitely dangerous, 
themselves denounced as heretics and infidels, and 
libelled as scoffi^rs and atheists. 

In truth, the majority of these champions of the 
evidential logic betray an almost entire unconscious- 
ness of the advance of opinion around them. Having 
their own ideas long since cast in the stereotyped 
mould of the past, they seem to expect that a pro- 
gressing age ought still to adhere to the same type, 
and bow implicitly to a solemn and pompous but 
childish parade and reiteration of the one-sided dog- 
mas of an obsolete school, coupled with awful denun- 
ciations of heterodoxy on all who refuse to listen to 
them. 

Paley clearly, as some of his modern commentators 
do avowedly, occupied the position of an advocate, not 
of a judge. They professedly stand up on one side, 
and challenge the counsel on the other to reply. 
Their object is, not truth, but their client's case. 



148 STUDY OF THE 

The whole argument is one of special pleading. We 
may admire the ingenuity and confess the adroitness 
with which favorable points are seized, unfavorable 
ones dropped, evaded, or disguised ; but we do not 
find ourselves the more impressed with those high 
and sacred convictions of truth, which ought to result 
rather from the wary, careful, dispassionate summing- 
up on both sides, which is the function of the impar- 
tial and inflexible judge. 

The one topic constantly insisted on as essential to 
the grounds of belief, considered as based on outward 
historical evidence, is that of the credibility of exter- 
nal facts as svpported by testimony. This has always 
formed the most material point in the reasonings of 
the evidential writers of former times, hower imper- 
fectly and unsatisfactorily to existing modes of thought 
they treated it ; and to this point their more recent 
followers have stiU almost as exclusively directed 
their attention. 

In the representations which they constantly make, 
we cannot but notice a strong apparent tendency and 
desire to uphold the mere assertion of witnesses as the 
supreme evidence of fact^ to the utter disparagement 
of all general grounds of reasoning, analogy, and an- 
tecedent credibility, by which that testimony may be 
modified or discredited. Yet we remark, that all the 
instances they adduce, when carefully examined, really 
tend to the very conclusion they are so anxious to set 
aside. Arguments of this kind are sometimes deduced 
from such cases as, e. g.^ the belief accorded on very 
slight ground of probability in all commercial trans- 
actions dependent on the assumed credit and charac- 
ter of the negotiating parties ; from the conclusions 
acted upon in life-assurances, notwithstanding the 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 149 

proverbial instability of life ; and the like : in all 
which, we can see no other real drift or tendency 
than to substantiate^ instead of disparage, the necessity 
for some deeply seated conviction of permanent order 
as the basis of all probability. 

A great source of misapprehension in this class of 
arguments has been the undue confusion between the 
force of testimony in regard to human affairs and 
events in history, and in regard to physical facts. It 
may be true, that some of the most surprising occur- 
rences in ordinary history are currently, and perhaps 
correctly, accepted on but slight grounds of real testi- 
mony ; but then they relate to events of a kind, which, 
however singular in their particular concomitant cir- 
cumstances, are not pretended to be beyond natural 
causes, or to involve higher questions of interven- 
tion. 

The most seemingly improbable events in human 
history may be perfectly credible on sufficient testi- 
mony, however contradicting ordinary experience of 
human motives and conduct ; simply because we can- 
not assign any limits to the varieties of human dispo- 
sitions, passions, or tendencies, or the extent to which 
they may be influenced by circumstances of which, 
perhaps, we have httle or no knowledge to guide us. 
But no such cases would have the remotest applica- 
bility to alleged violations of the laws of matter, or in- 
terruptions of the course oi physical causes. 

The case of the alleged external attestations of 
revelation is one essentially involving considerations 
of physical evidence. It is not one in which such 
reflections and habits of thought as arise out of a 
familiarity with human history and moral argument 
will suffice. These, no doubt, and other kindred 



150 STUDY OF THE 

topics, with which the scholar and the morahst are 
famihar, are of great and fundamental importance to 
our general views of the whole subject of Christian 
evidence ; but the particular case of miracles^ as such, 
is one specially bearing on purely physical contempla- 
tions, and on which no general moral principles, no 
common rules of evidence or logical technicalities, can 
enable us to form a correct judgment. It is not a 
question which can be decided by a few trite and 
commonplace generalities as to the moral government 
of the world and the belief in the Divine Omnipo- 
tence, or as to the validity of human testimony or the 
limits of human experience. It involves, and is essen- 
tially built upon, those grander conceptions of the 
order of nature, those comprehensive primary elements 
of all physical knowledge, those ultimate ideas of uni- 
versal causation, which can only be familiar to those 
thoroughly versed in cosmical philosophy in its widest 
sense. 

In an age of physical research like the present, all 
highly cultivated minds and duly advanced intellects 
have imbibed, more or less, the lessons of the induc- 
tive philosophy, and have, at least in some measure, 
learned to appreciate the gi:and foundation conception 
of universal law ; to recognize the impossibility even 
of any two material atoms subsisting together without 
a determinate relation ; of any action of the one on 
the other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, with- 
out reference to a physical cause ; of any modifica- 
tion whatsoever in the existing conditions of material 
agents, unless through the invariable operation of a 
series of eternally impressed consequences, following 
in some necessary chain of orderly connection, how- 
ever imperfectly known to us. So clear and indispu- 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 151 

table, indeed, has this great truth become, so deeply 
seated has it been now admitted to be in the essential 
nature of sensible things and of the external world, 
that not only do all philosophical inquirers adopt it 
as a primary principle and guiding maxim of all their 
researches, but, what is most worthy of remark, minds 
of a less comprehensive capacity, accustomed to reason 
on topics of another character, and on more contracted 
views, have at the present day been constrained to 
evince some concession to this grand principle, even 
when seemmg to oppose it. 

Among writers on these questions. Dean Trench has 
evinced a higher view of physical philosophy than we 
might have expected from the mere promptings of 
philology and literature, when he ajBfirms that " we 
continually behold lower laws held in restraint by 
higher, — mechanic by dynamic, chemical by vital, 
physical by moral ; " remarks which, if only followed 
out, entirely accord with the conclusion of universal 
subordination of causation : though we must remark, 
in passing, that the meaning of " moral laws control- 
Img physical " is not very clear. 

It is for the most part hazardous ground for any 
general moral reasoner to take, to discuss subjects of 
evidence which essentially involve that higher appre- 
ciation of physical truth which can be attained only 
from an accurate and comprehensive acquaintance 
with the connected series of the physical and mathe- 
matical sciences. Thus, for example, the simple but 
grand truth of the law of conservation, and the sta- 
bility of the heavenly motions, now well understood by 
all sound cosmical philosophers, is but the type of 
the universal self-sustaining and self-evolving powers 
which pervade all nature. Yet the difficulty of con- 



152 STUDY OF THE 

ceiving this truth in its simplest exemplification was 
formerly the chief hinderance to the acceptance of 
the solar system, — from the prepossession of the peri- 
patetic dogma, that there must be a constantly acting, 
moving force to keep it going. This very exploded 
chimera, however, by a singular infatuation, is now 
actually revived as the ground of argument for mirac- 
ulous interposition by redoubtable champions, who, to 
evince their profound knowledge of mechanical philos- 
ophy, inform us that " the whole of nature is like a 
mill, which cannot go on without the continual appli- 
cation of a moving power " ! 

Of these would-be philosophers we find many anx- 
iously dwelling on the topic, so undeniably just in 
itself, of the danger of incautious conclusions ; of 
the gross errors into which men fall by over-hasty gen- 
eralizations. They recount with triumph the absurd 
mistakes into wliich some even eminent philosophers 
have fallen in prematurely denying what experience 
has since fully shown to be true, because in the then 
state of knowledge it seemed incredible.* They feel 
an elevating sense of superiority in putting down the 
arrogance of scientific pretensions, by alleging the 
short-sighted dogmatism with which men of high re- 
pute in science have evinced a scepticism in points of 
vulgar belief, in which, after all, the vulgar belief has 
proved right. They even make a considerable display 
of reasoning on such cases ; but we cannot say that 
those reasonings are particularly distinguished for 
consistency, force, or originality. The philosopher 
(for example) denies the credibility of alleged events 



* Numerous instances of the kind referred to will be found cited in Mr. 
R. Chambers's J^ssay on Testimony, &c., Edinburgh Papers, 1859; and in 
Abp. Whately's edition of Paley's Evidences. 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 153 

professedly in their nature at variance with all physical 
analogy. These writers, in reply, affect to make a 
solemn appeal to the bar of analogy, and support it 
by instances which precisely defeat their own conclu- 
sion. Thus they advance the novel and profoundly 
instructive story of an Indian who denied the exist- 
ence of ice as at variance with experience ; and still 
more from the contradiction, that, being solid, it could 
not float in water. In like manner, they dwell upon 
other equally interesting stories of a butterfly, who, 
from the experience of liis ephemeral life in summer, 
denied that the leaves were ever brown or the ground 
covered with snow ; of a child who watched a clock 
made to strike only at noon, through many hours, and 
therefore concluded it could never strike ; of a person 
who had observed that fish are organized to swim, and 
therefore concluded there could be no such animals as 
flying fish. 

These, with a host of other equally recondite, novel, 
startling, and conclusive instances, are urged in a tone 
of solemn wisdom, to prove — what ? That water is 
converted into ice by a regular knoivn law ; that it 
has a specific gravity less than water by some law at 
present but imperfectly understood ; that, without vio- 
lation of analogy, fins may be modified into wings ; 
that it is part of the great law of climate, that, in 
winter, leaves are brown, and the ground sometimes 
white ; that machinery may be made with action in- 
termitting by laws as regular as those of its more 
ordinary operation ; in a word, that the philosopher 
who looks to an endless subordinating series of laws 
of succcessively higher generality is inconsistent in 
denying events at variance with that subordination ! 

It is indeed curious to notice the elaborate multi- 
7* 



154 STUDY OF THE 

plication of instances adduced by some of the writers 
referred to, all really tending to prove the subordina- 
tion of facts to laivs, clearly evinced as soon as the 
cases were well understood, though till then, often 
regarded in a sceptical spirit ; while of that scepticism 
they furnish the real and true refutation in the prin- 
ciple of law ultimately established, under whatever 
primary appearance and semblance of marvellous dis- 
cordance from all law. It would be beyond our limits 
to notice in detail such instances as are thus dwelt 
upon, and apparently regarded as of sovereign value 
and importance, to discredit philosophical generaliza- 
tion : such as the disbelief in the marvels recounted 
by Marco Polo ; of the miracle of the martyrs who 
spoke articulately after their tongues were cut out ; 
the angel seen in the air by two thousand persons at 
Milan ; the miraculous balls of fire on the spires at 
Plausac ; Herodotus's story of the bird in the mouth 
of the crocodile ; narratives of the sea-serpent, mar- 
vels of mesmerism and electro-biology, — all discred- 
ited formerly as fables ; vaccination observed and 
attested by peasants, but denied and ridiculed by 
medical men. 

These and the like cases are all urged as trium- 
phant proofs of — what ? That some men have always 
been found of unduly sceptical tendencies, and some- 
times of a rationally cautious turn ; who have heard 
strange, and perhaps exaggerated narratives, and have 
maintained sometimes a wise, sometimes an unwise, 
degree of reserve and caution in admitting tliem; 
though they have since proved in accordance with 
natural causes. 

Hallam and Rogers are cited as veritable witnesses 
to the truth of certain effects of mesmerism in their 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 156 

day generally disbelieved, and for asserting which 
they were met with all but an imputation of " the 
lie direct." They admitted, however, that their asser- 
tion was founded on " experience so rare as to be had 
only once in a century;" but that experience has been 
since universally borne out by all who have candidly 
examined the question, and the apparantly isolated 
and marvellous cases have settled down into examples 
of broad and general laius, now fully justified by expe- 
rience and analogy. 

Physiological evidence is adduced (which we will 
suppose well substantiated) to show that the excision 
of the whole tongue does not take away the power of 
speech, though that of the extremity does so : hence 
the denial of the story from imperfect experience. So 
of other cases : the angel at Milan was the aerial re- 
flection of an image on a church ; the balls of fire at 
Plausac were electrical ; the sea-serpent was a bask- 
ing shark or a stem of sea-weed. A committee of the 
French Academy of Sciences, with Lavoisier at its 
head, after a grave investigation, pronounced the al- 
leged fall of aerolites to be a superstitious fable. It 
is, however, now substantiated, not as a miracle, but 
as a well-known natural phenomenon. Instances of 
undue philosophical scepticism are unfortunately com- 
mon ; but they are the errors, not the correct pro- 
cesses, of inductive inquiry. 

Granting all these instances, we merely ask. What 
do they prove, except the real and paramount domin- 
ion of the rule of law and order ^ of universal subordi- 
nation of pyhsical causes^ as the sole principle and 
criterion of proof and evidence in the region of physi- 
cal and sensible truth ? and nowhere more emphatically 
than in the history of marvels and prodigies do we 



156 STUDY OF THE 

find a verification of the truth, " Opinionum commenta 
delet dies, naturae judicia confirmat." 

This, in fact, is the sole real result of all the pro- 
found parallelisms and illustrative anecdotes so con- 
fidently but unconsciously adduced by these writers 
with an opposite design. 

What is the real conclusion from the far-famed 
" Historic Doubts " and the '' Chronicles of Ecnarf," 
but simply this, — there is a rational solution^ a real 
conformity to analogy and experience, to whatever 
extent a partially informed inquirer might be led to 
reject the recounted apparent wonders on imperfect 
knowledge and from too hasty inference ? These 
delightful parodies on Scripture (if they prove any- 
thing) would simply prove tliat the Bible narrative 
is no more properly miraculous than the marvellous 
exploits of Napoleon I., or the paradoxical events of 
recent liistory. 

Just a similar scepticism has been evinced by nearly 
all the first physiologists of the day, who have joined 
in rejecting the development theories of Lamarck and 
the " Vestiges ; " and, while they have strenuously 
maintained successive creations, have denied and 
denounced the alleged production of organic life by 
Messrs. Crosse and Weekes, and stoutly maintained 
the impossibility of spontaneous generation, on the 
alleged ground of contradiction to experience. Yet 
it is now acknowledged under the high sanction of 
the name of Owen,* that " creation " is only another 
name for our ignorance of the mode of production ; 
and it has been the unanswered and unanswerable 
argument of another reasoner, that new species must 
have originated either out of their inorganic elements, 

* British Association Address, 1858. 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 157 

or out of previously organized forms ; either develop- 
ment or spontaneous generation must he true ; while a 
work has now appeared by a naturalist of the most 
acknowledged authority, — Mr. Darwin's masterly 
volume on " The Origin of Species " by the law of 
" natural selection," — which now substantiates on 
undeniable grounds the very principle so long de- 
nounced by the first naturalists, — the origination of 
new species by natural causes ; a work which must 
soon bring about an entire revolution of opinion in 
favor of the grand principle of the self-evolving powers 
of nature. 

By parity of reason, it might just as well be ob- 
jected to Archbishop Whately's theory of civilization, 
we have only for a few centuries known anything of 
savages : how then can we pretend to infer that they 
have never civilized themselves ? — never, in all that 
enormous length of time which modern discovery has 
now indisputably assigned to the existence of the 
human race ! This theory, however, is now intro- 
duced as a comment on Paley in support of the cred- 
ibility of revelation ; and an admirable argument no 
doubt it is, though perhaps many would apply it in 
a sense somewhat different from that of the author. 
If the use of fire, the cultivation of the soil, and the 
like, were divine revelations, the most obvious infer- 
ence would be, that so likewise are printing and 
steam. If the boomerang was divinely communicated 
to savages ignorant of its principle, then surely the 
disclosure of that principle in our time by the gyro- 
scope was equally so. But no one denies revelation 
in this sense : the philosophy of the age does not dis- 
credit the inspiration of prophets and apostles, though 
it may sometimes believe it in poets, legislators, phi- 



158 STUDY OF THE 

losophers, and others gifted with high genius. At all 
events, the revelation of civilization does not involve 
the question of external miracles, which is here the 
sole point in dispute. The main assertion of Paley is, 
that it is impossible to conceive a revelation given 
except by means of miracles. This is his primary 
axiom ; but this is precisely the point which the mod- 
ern turn of reasoning most calls in question, and 
rather adopts the belief that a revelation is then most 
credible, when it appeals least to violations of natural 
causes. Thus, if miracles were, in the estimation of a 
former age, among the chief supports of Christianity, 
they are at present among the main difficulties, and 
hinderances to its acceptance. 

One of the first inductive philosophers of the age 
(Professor Faraday) has incurred the unlimited dis- 
pleasure of these profound intellectualists, because he 
has urged that the mere contracted experience of the 
senses is liable to deception, and that we ought to be 
guided in our conclusions, and, in fact, can only cor- 
rect the errors of the senses, by a careful recurrence 
to the consideration of natural laws and extended 
analogies.* In opposition to this heretical proposition, 
theyt set in array the dictum of two great author- 
ities of the Scottish school (Drs. Abercrombie and 
Chalmers), that, "on a certain amount of testimony, 
we might believe any statement, however improba- 
ble ; " so that, if a number of respectable witnesses 
were to concur in asseverating that on a certain occa- 
sion they had seen two and two make five we should 
be bound to believe them! 



* Lecture en Mental Education, 1854. 

•f See Edinburgh Papers, " Testimony," &c., by R. Chambers, Esq., 
F. E. S. E., &c. 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 159 

This, perhaps it will be said, is an extreme case. 
Let us suppose another : if a number of veracious 
witnesses were to allege a real instance of witchcraft 
at the present day, there might, no doubt, be found 
some infatuated persons who would believe it; but 
the strongest of such assertions to any educated man. 
would but prove, either that the witnesses were cun- 
ningly imposed upon, or the wizard himself deluded. 
If the most numerous ship's company were all to 
asseverate that they had seen a mermaid, would any 
rational persons at the present day believe them ? 
That they saw something which they believed to be a 
mermaid would be easily conceded. No amount of 
attestation of innumerable and honest witnesses would 
ever convince any one, versed in mathematical and 
mechanical science that a person had squared the 
circle or discovered perpetual motion. Antecedent 
credibility depends on antecedent knowledge and en- 
larged views of the connection and dependence of 
truths, and the value of any testimony will be modi- 
fied or destroyed in different degrees to minds differ- 
ently enlightened. 

Testimony, after all, is but a second-hand assurance ; 
it is but a blind guide : testimony can avail nothing 
against reason. The essential question of miracles 
stands quite apart from any consideration of testi- 
mony : the question would remain the same, if we 
had the evidence of our own senses to an alleged 
miracle ; that is, to an extraordinary or inexplicable 
fact. It is not the mere fact, but the cause or expla- 
nation of it, which is the point at issue. 

The case, indeed, of the antecedent argument of 
miracles is very clear, however little some are inclined 
to perceive it. In nature and from nature, by science 



160 STUDY OF THE 

and by reason, we neither have, nor can possibly have, 
any evidence of a Deity working' miracles : for that, 
we must go out of nature and beyond reason. If we 
could have any such evidence from nature, it could 
only prove extraordinary natural effects, which would 
not be miracles in the old theological sense, as isolated, 
unrelated, and uncaused ; whereas no physical fact can 
be conceived as unique, or without analogy and rela- 
tion to others and to the whole system of natural 
causes. 

To conclude : an alleged miracle can only be re- 
garded in one of two ways, — either (1) abstractedly 
as a physical event, and therefore to be investigated 
by reason and physical evidence, and referred to phys- 
ical causes, possibly to known causes ; but, at all 
events, to some higher cause or law, if at present 
unknown : it then ceases to be supernatural, yet still 
might be appealed to in support of religious truth, 
especially as referring to the state of knowledge and 
apprehensions of the parties addressed in past ages. 
Or (2) as connected with religious doctrine, regarded 
in a sacred light, asserted on the authority of inspira- 
tion. In this case, it ceases to be capable of investiga- 
tion by reason, or to own its dominion. It is accepted 
on religious grounds, and can appeal only to the prin- 
ciple and influence of faith. 

Thus miraculous narratives become invested with 
the character of articles of faith, if they be accepted 
in a less positive and certain light, or perhaps as in- 
volving more or less of the parabolic or mythic char- 
acter ; or, at any rate, as received in connection with 
and for the sake of the doctrine inculcated. 

Some of the most strenuous advocates of the Chris- 
tian " evidences " readily avow, indeed expressly con- 



EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 161 

tend, that the attestation of miracles is, after all, not 
irresistible ; and that in the very uncertainty which 
confessedly remains lies the " trial of faith," * which 
it is thus implied must really rest on some other inde- 
pendent moral conviction. 

In the popular acceptation, it is clear the Gospel 
miracles are always objects^ not evidences of faith ; and 
when they are connected specially with doctrines, as 
in several of the higher mysteries of the Christian 
faith, the sanctity which invests the point of faith it- 
self is extended to the external narrative in which it 
is embodied ; the reverence due to the mystery ren- 
ders the external events sacred from examination, 
and shields them also within the pale of the sanc- 
tuary ; the miracles are merged in the doctrines with 
which they are connected, and associated with the 
declarations of spiritual things which are, as such, 
exempt from those criticisms to which physical state- 
ments would be necessarily amenable. 

But, even in a reasoning point of view, those who 
insist most on the positive external proofs allow that 
moral evidence is distinguished from demonstrative^ 
not only in that it admits of degrees, but more espe- 
cially in that the same moral argument is of different 
force to different minds : and the advocate of Chris- 
tian evidence triumphs in the acknowledgment, that 
the strength of Christianity lies in the variety of its 
evidences, suited to all varieties of apprehension ; and 
that, amid all the diversities of conception, those who 
cannot appreciate some one class of proofs will always 
find some other satisfactory, is itself the crowning 
evidence. 



* See, e.g., Butler's Analogy, part ii. chap. 6. 

K 



162 EVIDENCES OF CHKISTIANITY. 

With a firm belief in constant supernatural inter- 
position, the contemporaries of the apostles were as 
much blinded to the reception of the gospel, as, with 
an opposite persuasion, others have been at a later 
period. Those who had access to living divine in- 
struction were not superior to the prepossessions and 
ignorance of their times. There never existed an 
" infallible age " of exemption from doubt or preju- 
dice ; and if, to later times, records, written in the 
characters of a long-past epoch, are left to be deci- 
phered by the advancing light of learning and science, 
the spirit of faith discovers continually increasing at- 
testation of the divine authority of the truths they 
include. 

The '''reason of the hope that is in us" is not 
restricted to external signs, nor to any one kind of 
evidence, but consists of such assurance as may be 
most satisfactory to each earnest individual inquirer's 
own mind : and the true acceptance of the entire 
revealed manifestation of Christianity will be most 
worthily and satisfactorily based on that assurance of 
" faitli," by which, the apostle affirms, " we stand " 
(2 Cor. ii. 24) ; and which, in accordance with his 
emphatic declaration, must rest, " not in the wisdom 
of man, but in the power of God" (1 Cor. ii. 5). 



SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE -THE 
NATIONAL CHURCH. 

By henry BRISTOW WILSON, B.D. 

IN the city of Geneva, once the stronghold of the 
severest creed of the Reformation, Christianity 
itself has of late years received some very rude 
shocks. But special attempts have been recently 
made to counteract their effects, and to reorganize 
the Christian congregations upon evangelical princi- 
ples. In pursuance of this design, there have been 
delivered and published, during the last few years, a 
series of addresses by distinguished persons holding 
evangelical sentiments, entitled " Seances Histori- 
ques." The attention of the hearers was to be con- 
ciliated by the concrete form of these discourses ; the 
phenomenon of the historical Christianity to be pre- 
sented as a fact which could not be ignored, and 
which must be acknowledged to have had some spe- 
cial source ; while from time to time, as occasion 
offered, the more peculiar views of the speakers were 
to be instilled. But, before this panorama of historic 
scenes had advanced beyond the period of the fall of 
Heathenism in the West, there had emerged a re- 
markable discrepancy between the views of two of 
the authors, otherwise agreeing in the main. 



164 SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GEXEVE. 

It fell to the Comte Leon de Gasparin to illustrate 
the reign of Constantine. He laid it down in the 
strongest manner, that the individualist principle sup- 
plies the true basis of the Church ; and that, by inaug- 
urating the union between Church and State, Con- 
stantine introduced into Christianity the false and 
Pagan principle of Multitudinism. M. Bungener 
followed in two lectures upon the age of Ambrose 
and Theodosius. He felt it necessary, for his own 
satisfaction and that of others, to express his dissent 
from these opinions. He agreed in the portraiture 
drawn, by his predecessor, of the so-called first Chris- 
tian emperor, and in his estimate of his personal 
character. But he maintained that the Multitudinist 
principle was not unlawful nor essentially Pagan ; 
that it was recognized and consecrated in the example 
of the Jewish theocracy ; that the greatest victories 
of Christianity have been won by it ; that it showed 
itself under apostolic sanction as early as the day 
of Pentecost : for it would be absurd to suppose the 
three thousand who were joined to the Church on the 
preaching of Peter to have been all " converted " per- 
sons in the modern evangelical sense of the word. 
He especially pointed out, that the churches which 
claim to be founded upon Individualism, fall back 
themselves, when they become hereditary, upon the 
Multitudinist principle. His brief but very pertinent 
observations on that subject were concluded in these 
words : — 



" Le multitudinisme est une force qui peut, comme toute force, 
etre mal dirigee, mal exploitee, mais qui peut aussi I'etre au profit 
de la verite, de la piete, de la vie. Les Eglises fondees sur un 
autre principe ont aide k rectifier celui-lh, ; c'est un des incontes- 
tables services qu'elles ont rendus, de nos jours, k la cause de 
I'dvangile. Elles ont droit k notre reconnaissance ; mais k Geneve, 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 165 

qu'elles ne nous demandent pas ce que nous ne pouvons faire, et 
qu'on me permette de le dire, ce qu'elles ne font pas elles-memes. 
Qui : le multitudinisme genevois est reste vivant chez elles ; et 
certainement elles lui doivent une portion notable de leur consist- 
ance au dedans, de leur influence au dehors. Elles font appel, 
comme nous, h ses souvenirs et h. ses gloires ; elles forment, avec 
nous, ce que le monde chretien appelle, et appellera toujours, 
' I'Eglise de Geneve.' Nous ne la renions, au fond, pas plus les 
uns que les autres. Elle a ete, elle est, elle restera, notre mere h 
tous." * 

Such are tlie feelings in favor of Nationalism on 
the part of M. Bungener, a member of the Genevan 
Church, — a church to which many would not even 
concede that title, and of which the ecclesiastical 
renown centres upon one great name ; while the civil 
history of the country presents but little of interest 
either in ancient or modern times. But the questions 
at issue between these two Genevans are of wide 
Christian concern, and especially to ourselves. If the 
Genevans cannot be proud of their Calvin, as they 
cannot in all things, — and even he is not truly their 
own, — they have little else of which to speak before 
Christendom. Yery different are the recollections 
which are awakened by the past history of such a 
Church as ours. Its roots are found to penetrate 
deep into the history of the most freely and fully de- 
veloped nationality in the world, and its firm hold 
upon the past is one of its best auguries for the future. 
It has lived through Saxon rudeness, Norman rapine, 
baronial oppression and bloodshed ; it has survived 
the tyranny of Tudors, recovered from fanatical as- 
saults, escaped the treachery of Stuarts ; has not per- 
ished under coldness, nor been stifled with patronage, 
nor sunk utterly in a dull age, nor been entirely 



* S6ances Historiques de Geneve — Le Christianisme au 4i6me Si^cle, 
p. 153. 



166 SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE. 

depraved in a corrupt one. Neither as a spiritual 
society, nor as a national institution, need there be any 
fear that the Church of this country, which has passed 
through so many ordeals, shall succumb because we 
may be on the verge of some political and ecclesias- 
tical changes. We ourselves cohere with those who 
have preceded us, under very different forms of civil 
constitution, and under a very different creed, and 
externals of worship. The " rude forefathers," whose 
mouldering bones, layer upon layer, have raised the 
soil round the foundations of our old churches, adored 
the Host, worshipped the Virgin, signed themselves 
with the sign of the cross, sprinkled themselves with 
holy water, and paid money for masses for the relief 
of souls in purgatory. But it is no reason, because 
we trust that spiritually we are at one with the best of 
those who have gone before us in better things than 
these, that we should revert to their old-world prac- 
tices ; nor should we content ourselves with simply 
transmitting to those who shall follow us traditions 
which have descended to ourselves, if we can trans- 
mit something better. There is a time for building 
up old waste places, and a time for raising fresh 
structures ; a time for repairing the ancient paths, 
and a time for filling the valleys and lowerijig the 
liills in the constructing of new. The Jews, contem- 
poraries of Jesus and his apostles, were fighters 
against God in refusing to accept a new application 
of things written in the Law, the Prophets, and the 
Psalms ; the Romans in the time of Theodosius were 
fighters against him, when they resisted the new 
religion with an appeal to old customs ; so were the 
opponents of Wycliffe and his English Bible, and the 
opponents of Cranmer and his Beformation. Meddle 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 167 

not with them that are given to change is a warning 
for some times, and self-willed persons may " bring in 
damnable heresies : " at others, '' old things are to pass 
away ; " and that is erroneously " called heresy " by 
the blind which is really a worshipping the God of 
the fathers in a better way. 

When signs of the times are beheld foretelling 
change, it behooves those who think they perceive 
them to indicate them to others, not in any spirit of 
presumption or of haste ; and, in no spirit of presump- 
tion, to suggest inquiries as to the best method of 
adjusting old things to new conditions. 

Many evils are seen in various ages, if not to have 
issued directly, to have been intimately linked with 
the Christian profession ; such as religious wars, per- 
secutions, delusions, impositions, spiritual tyrannies. 
Many goods of civilization in our own day, when men 
have run to and fro and knowledge has been increased, 
have apparently not the remotest connection with the 
gospel. Hence grave doubts arise in the minds of 
really well-meaning persons, whether the secular fu- 
ture of humanity is necessarily bound up with the 
diffusion of Christianity ; whether the Church is to be 
hereafter the life-giver to human society. It would 
be idle on the part of religious advocates to treat 
anxieties of this kind as if they were forms of the 
old Voltairian anti-Christianism. They are not those 
affectations of difficulties whereby vice endeavors to 
lull asleep its fears of a judgment to come ; nor 
are they the pretensions of ignorant and presump- 
tuous spirits, making themselves wise beyond the 
limits of man's wisdom. Even if such were, indeed, 
the sources of the wide-spread doubts respecting tra- 
ditional Christianity which prevail in our own day, 



168 SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE. 

it would be rery injudicious polemic which should 
content itself with denouncing the wickedness, or ex- 
pressing pity for the blindness, of those who entertain 
them. An imputation of evil motives may imbitter 
an opponent and add gall to controversy, but can 
never dispense with the necessity for replying to his 
arguments, nor with the advisableness of neutralizing 
his objections. 

If anxieties respecting the future of Christianity, 
and the office of the Christian Church in time to 
come, were confined to a few students or speculative 
philosophers, they might be put aside as mere theo- 
retical questions. If rude criticisms upon the Scrip- 
tures, of the Tom-Paine kind, proceeding from agitators 
of the masses, or from uninstructed persons, were the 
only assaults to which the letter of the Bible was ex- 
posed, it might be thought that further instruction 
would impart a more reverential and submissive spir- 
it. If lay-people only entertained objections to estab- 
lished formularies in some of their parts, a self-satisfied 
sacerdotalism, confident in a supernaturally transmitted 
illumination, might succeed in keeping peace within 
the walls of emptied churches. It may not be very 
easy, by a statistical proof, to convince those, whose 
preconceptions indispose them to admit it, of the fact 
of a very wide-spread alienation, both of educated 
and uneducated persons, from the Christianity which 
is ordinarily presented in our churches and chapels. 
Whether it be their reason or their moral sense which 
is shocked by what they hear there, the ordinances of 
public worship and religious instruction provided for 
the people of England, alike in the endowed and un- 
endowed churches, are not used by them to the extent 
we should expect, if they valued them very highly, 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 169 

or if they were really adapted to the wants of their 
nature as it is. And it has certainly not hitherto re- 
ceived the attention which such a grave circumstance 
demanded, that a number equal to five millions and 
a quarter of persons should have neglected to attend 
means of public worship within their reach on the cen- 
sus Sunday in 1851 ; these five millions and a quarter 
being forty-two per cent of the whole number able 
and with opportunity of then attending. As an indi- 
cation, on the other hand, of a great extent of dissat- 
isfaction on the part of the clergy to some portion, 
at least, of the formularies of the Church of England, 
may be taken the fact of the existence of various as- 
sociations to procure their revision, or some liberty 
in their use, especially that of omitting one unhappy 
creed. 

It is generally the custom of those who wish to 
ignore the necessity for grappling with modern ques- 
tions concerning biblical interpretation, the construc- 
tion of the Christian Creed, the position and prospects 
of the Christian Church, to represent the disposition 
to entertain them as a disease contracted by means 
of German inoculation. At other times, indeed, the 
tables are turned, and theological inquirers are to be 
silenced with the reminder, that, in the native land of 
the modern scepticism. Evangelical and High-Lutheran 
reactions have already put it down. It may be that 
on these subjects we shall in England be much in- 
debted, for some time to come, to the patience of 
German investigators ; but we are by no means likely 
to be mystified by their philosophical speculations, nor 
to be carried away by an inclination to force all facts 
within the sweep of some preconceived comprehen- 
sive theory. If the German biblical critics have 



170 SEANCES HISTOPJQUES DE GENEVE. 

gathered together much evidence, the verdict will 
have to be pronounced by the sober English judg- 
ment. But, in fact, the influence of this foreign 
literature extends to comparatively few among us, 
and is altogether insufficient to account for the wide 
spread of that which has been called the negative 
■ theology. This is rather owing to a spontaneous 
recoil, on the part of large numbers of the more 
acute of our population, from some of the doctrines 
which are to be heard at church and chapel ; to a 
distrust of the old arguments for, or proofs of, a 
miraculous revelation ; and to a misgiving as to the 
authority, or extent of the authority of the Scriptures. 
In the presence of real difficulties of this kind, proba- 
bly of genuine English growth, it is vain to seek to 
check that open discussion out of which alone any sat- 
isfactory settlement of them can issue. 

There may be a certain amount of literature circu- 
lating among us in a cheap form, of which the purpose, 
with reference to Christianity, is simply negative and 
destructive, and which is characterized by an absence 
of all reverence, not only for beliefs, but for the best 
human feelings which have gathered round them, 
even when they have been false or superstitious. 
But if those who are old enough to do so would com- 
pare the tone generally of the sceptical publications 
of the present day with that of the papers of Hone 
and others about forty years ago, they would be re- 
minded that assaults were made then upon the 
Christian religion in far grosser form than now, and 
long before opinion could have been inoculated by 
German philosophy, — long before the more celebrated 
criticisms upon the details of the evangelical histories 
had appeared. But it was attacked then as an insti- 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 171 

tution, or bj reason of the unpopularity of institutions 
and methods of government connected, or supposed 
to be connected, with it. The anti-Christian agitation 
of that day in England was a phase of radical]/^ m, 
and of a radicalism which was a terrific and uprooting 
force, of which the counterpart can scarcely be said 
to exist among us now. 

The sceptical movements in this ger-^ration are the 
result of observation and thoug'it, not of passion. 
Things come to the knowledge of almost all persons, 
which were unknown a, generation ago, even to the 
well-informed. Tb^is the popular knowledge, at that 
time, of the surface of the earth, and of the populations 
which cover it was extremely incomplete. In our 
own boyhood, the world, as known to the ancients, was 
nearly all which was known to ourselves. We have 
recently become acquainted, intimate, with the teem- 
ing regions of the Far East ; and with empires, Pa- 
gan or even Atheistic, of which the origin runs far 
back beyond the historic records of Judaea or of the 
"West, and which were more populous than all Chris- 
tendom now is for many ages before the Christian era. 
Not any book-learning, not any proud exaltation of 
reason, not any dreamy German metaphysics, not any 
minute and captious biblical criticism, suggest ques- 
tions to those who on "Sundays hear the reading and 
exposition of the Scriptures as they were expounded 
to our forefathers, and on Monday peruse the news of 
a world of which our forefathers little dreamed, — 
descriptions of great nations, in some senses barbar- 
ous compared with ourselves, but composed of men 
of flesh and blood like our own ; of like passions ; 
marrying and domestic ; congregating in great cities ; 
buying and selling, and getting gain ; agriculturists, 



172 SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE. 

merchants, manufacturers ; making wars, establishing 
dynasties ; falling down before objects of worship, 
cpnstituting priesthoods, binding themselves by oaths, 
hoiV^i'iiig the dead. In what relation does the gospel 
standi to t^iese millions ? Is there any trace on the 
face of -'its records, that it even contemplated their 
existence ? \We are told, that to know and believe in 
Jesus Christ, iV,4i^some sense necessary to salvation. 
It has not been gi^ij to these. Are they, will they 
be hereafter, the worse^^sff for their ignorance ? As 
to abstruse points of doctriil'^ concerning the Divine 
Nature itself, those subjects may be thought to lie 
beyond the range of our faculties. If one says " Ay," 
no other is entitled to say " No " to his " Ay : " if one 
says " No," no one is entitled to say " Ay " to his " No." 
Besides, the best approximative illustrations of those 
doctrines must be sought in metaphysical conceptions 
of which few are capable ; and in the history of old 
controversies with which fewer still are acquainted. 
But, with respect to the moral treatment of his crea- 
tures by Almiglity God, all men, in different degrees, 
are able to be judges of the representations made of it, 
by reason of the moral sense which he has given them. 
As to the necessity of faith in a Saviour to these 
peoples, when they could never have had it, no one, 
upon reflection, can believe in any such thing : doubt- 
less they will be equitably dealt with. And, when we 
hear fine distinctions drawn between covenanted and 
uncovenanted mercies, it seems either to be a distinc- 
tion without a difference, or to amount to a denial of 
the broad and equal justice of the Supreme Being. 
We cannot be content to wrap this question up, and 
leave it for a mystery, as to what shall become of those 
myriads upon myriads of non-Christian races. First. 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 173 

if our traditions tell us that tliey are involved in the 
curse and perdition of Adam, and may justly be pun- 
ished hereafter, individually, for his transgression, — 
not having been extricated from it by saving faith, 
— we are disposed to think that our traditions cannot 
herein fairly declare to us the words and inferences 
from Scripture : but if, on examination, it should turn 
out that they have, we must say that the authors of 
the Scriptural books have in those matters represented 
to us their own inadequate conceptions, and not the 
mmd of the Spirit of God ; for we must conclude with 
the apostle, " Yea, let God be true, and every man a 
liar." 

If, indeed, we are at liberty to believe that all shall 
be equitably dealt with according to their opportuni- 
ties, whether they have heard or not of the name of 
Jesus, then we can acknowledge the case of the 
Christian and non-Christian populations to be one of 
difference of advantages ; and, of course, no account 
can be given of the principle which determines the 
unequal distribution of the divine benefits. The ex- 
hibition of the divine attributes is not to be brought 
to measure of numbers or proportions ; but human 
statements concerning the dealings of God with man- 
kind, hypotheses and arguments about them, may 
very usefully be so tested. Truly, the abstract or 
philosophical difficulty may be as great concerning a 
small number of persons unprovided for, or, as might 
be inferred from some doctrinal statements, not equi- 
tably dealt with, in the divine dispensations, as con- 
cerning a large one ; but it does not so force itself on 
the imagination and heart of the generality of observ- 
ers. The difficulty, though not new in itself, is new 
as to the great increase in the numbers of those who 



174 SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE. 

feel it, and in the practical urgency for discovering 
an answer, solution, or neutralization for it, if we 
would set many unquiet souls at rest.V 

From the same source of the advanc^ of general 
knowledge respecting the inhabitancy of the world 
issues another inquiry concerning a promise, prophe- 
cy, or assertion of Scripture. For the commission of 
Jesus to his apostles was to preach the gospel to " all 
nations," " to every creature ; " and St. Paul says of 
the Gentile world, " But I say, have they not heard ? 
Yes, verily, their sound went into all the earth, and 
their words unto the ends of the world " (Rom. x. 18) ; 
and speaks of the gospel *' which was preached to 
every nation under heaven " (Col. i. 23), when it has 
never yet been preached even to the half. Then, 
again, it has often been appealed to as an evidence 
of the supernatural origin of Christianity, and as an 
instance of supernatural assistance vouchsafed to it 
in the first centuries, that it so soon overspread the 
world. It has seemed but a small leap of about three 
hundred years to the age of Constantino, if in that 
time, not to insist upon the letter of the texts already 
quoted, the conversion of the civilized world could be 
accomplished. It may be known only to the more 
learned, that it was not accomplished with respect to 
the Roman Empire even then ; that the Christians of 
the East cannot be fairly computed at more than half 
the population, nor the Christians of the West at so 
much as a third, at the commencement of that emper- 
or's reign. But it requires no learning to be aware 
that neither then nor subsequently have the Christians 
amounted to more than a fourth part of the people of 
the earth ; and it is seen to be impossible to appeal 
any longer to the wonderful spread of Christianity in 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 175 

the three first centuries as a special evidence of the 
wisdom and goodness of God. 

So likewise a very grave modification of an " evi- 
dence " heretofore current must ensue in another 
respect, in consequence of an increased knowledge 
of other facts connected with the foregoing. It has 
been customary to argue, that, a priori^ a supernatural 
revelation was to be expected at the time when Jesus 
Christ was manifested upon the earth, by reason of 
the exhaustion of all natural or unassisted human 
efforts for the amelioration of mankind. The state of 
the world, it has been customary to say, had become 
so utterly corrupt and hopeless under the Roman 
sway, that a necessity and special occasion was pre- 
sented for an express divine intervention. Our re- 
cently enlarged ethnographical information shows such 
an argument to be altogether inapplicable to the case. 
If we could be judges of the necessity for a special 
divine intervention, the stronger necessity existed in 
tlie East. There immense populations, like the Chi- 
nese, had never developed the idea of a personal God, 
or had degenerated from a once pure theological creed, 
as in India, from the religion of the Yedas. Oppres- 
sions and tyrannies, caste-distinctions, common and 
enormous vices, a polluted idolatrous worship, as bad 
as the worst which disgraced Rome, Greece, or Syria, 
had prevailed for ages. 

It would not be very tasteful, as an exception to 
this description, to call Buddhism the gospel of India, 
preached to it five or six centuries before the gospel 
of Jesus was proclaimed in the nearer East ; but, on 
the whole, it would be more like the realities of things, 
as we can now behold them, to say that the Christian 
revelation was given to the Western world because it 



176 SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE. 

deserved it better and was more prepared for it than 
the East. Philosophers, at least, had anticipated in 
speculation some of its dearest hopes, and had pre- 
pared the way for its self-denying ethics. 

There are many other sources of the modern ques- 
tionings of traditional Christianity, which cannot now 
be touched upon, originating, like those which have 
been mentioned, in a change of circumstances where- 
in observers are placed ; whereby their thoughts are 
turned in new directions, and they are rendered dis- 
satisfied with old modes of speaking. But such a 
difficulty as that respecting the souls of Heathendom, 
wiiich must now come closely home to multitudes 
among us, will disappear, if it be candidly acknowl- 
edged that the words of the New Testament, which 
speak of the preaching of the gospel to the whole 
world, wxre limited to the understanding of the times 
when they were spoken ; that doctrines concerning 
salvation, to be met with in it, are, for the most part, 
applicable only to those to whom the preaching of 
Christ should come ; and that we must draw our con- 
clusions respecting a just dealing hereafter with the 
individuals who make up the sum of Heathenism, 
rather from reflections suggested by our own moral 
instincts than from the express declarations of Scrip- 
ture winters, who had no such knowledge as is given 
to ourselves of the amplitude of the world which is 
the scene of the divine manifestations. 

Moreover, to our great comfort, there have been 
preserved to us words of the Lord Jesus himself, de- 
claring tliat the conditions of men in another world 
will be determined by their moral characters in this, 
and not by their hereditary or traditional creeds ; and 
both many words and the practice of the great Apostlo 



THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 177 

Paul, within tlie range which was given him, tend to 
the same result. He has been thought even to make 
an allusion to the Buddhist Dharmma, or law, when 
he said, " When the Gentiles, which have not the law, 
do by nature the things contained in the law, these 
having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which 
show the work of the law written in their hearts," &c. 
(Rom. ii. 14, 15). However this may be, it is evident, 
that, if such a solution as the above is accepted, a 
variety of doctrinal statements hitherto usual — Cal- 
vinistic and Lutheran theories on the one hand, and 
sacramental and hierarchical ones on the other — 
must be thrown into the background, if not aban- 
doned. 

There may be a long future during which the 
present course of the world shall last. Instead of its 
drawing near the close of its existence, as repre- 
sented in Millenarian or Rabbinical fables, and with 
so many more souls, according to some interpretations 
of the gospel of salvation, lost to Satan in every age 
and in every nation than have been won to Christ, 
that the victory would evidently be on the side of the 
Fiend, we may yet be only at the commencement of 
the career of the great Spiritual Conqueror even in 
this world. Nor have we any right to say that the 
effects of what He does upon earth shall not extend 
and propagate themselves in worlds to come. But, 
under any expectation of the duration of the present 
secular constitution, it is of the deepest interest to us, 
both as observers and as agents, placed evidently at 
an epoch when humanity finds itself under new condi- 
tions, to form some definite conception to ourselves of 
the way in which Christianity is henceforward to act 
upon the world which is our own. 

8* L 



178 SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE. 

Different estimates are made of the beneficial effects 
already wrought by Christianity upon the secular as- 
pect of the world, according to tlie different points of 
view from which it is regarded. Some endeavor, 
from an impartial standing-point, to embrace in one 
panorama the whole religious history of mankind, of 
which Christianity then becomes the most important 
phase ; others can only look at such a history from 
within some narrow chamber of doctrinal and eccle- 
siastical prepossessions. And anticipations equally 
different for like reasons will be entertained by per- 
sons differently imbued, as to the form under which, 
and the machinery by which, it shall hereafter be 
presented with success, either to the practically un- 
christianizcd populations of countries like our own, 
or to peoples of other countries never as yet even 
nominally Christianized. 

Although the consequences of what the gospel does 
will be carried on into other worlds, its work is to be 
done here. Although some of its work here must be 
imseen, yet not all ; nor much even of its unseen work, 
without at least some visible manifestation and effects. 
The invisible Church is to us a mere abstraction. Now, 
it is acknowledged on all hands, that to the Multitu- 
dinist principle are due the great external victories 
which the Christian name has hitherto won. On the 
other hand, it is alleged by the advocates of Indi- 
vidualism, that these outward acquisitions and numer- 
ical accessions have always been made at the expense 
of the purity of the Church, and also that Scriptural 
authority and the earliest practice is in favor of Indi- 
vidualism. Moreover, almost all the corruptions of 
Christianity are attributed by Individualists to the 
effecting \>y the Emperor Constantine of an unholy 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 179 

alliance between Church and State. Yet a fair review, 
as far as there are data for it, of the state of Chris- 
tianity before the time of that emperor, will leave us 
in at least very great doubt whether the Christian 
character was really, in the anterior period, superior 
on the average to what it has subsequently been. We 
may appeal to the most ancient records extant, and 
even to the Apostolic Epistles themselves, to show 
that neither in doctrine nor in morals did the prim- 
itive Christian communities at all approach to the 
ideal which has been formed of them. The moral 
defects of the earliest converts are the subject of the 
gravest expostulation on the part of the apostolic 
writers ; and the doctrinal features of the early 
Church are much more undetermined than would be 
thought by those who read them only through the 
ecclesiastical creeds. 

Those who belong to very different theological 
schools acknowledge at times that they cannot with 
any certainty find in the highest ecclesiastical anti- 
quity the dogmas which they consider most important. 
It is customary with Lutherans to represent their doc- 
trine of justification by subjective faith as having died 
out shortly after the apostolic age. In fact, it never 
was the doctrine of any considerable portion of the 
Church till the time of the Reformation. It is not 
met with in the immediately post-apostolic writings, 
nor in the apostolic writings, except those of St. Paul ; 
not even in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is of 
the Pauline or Paulo- Johannean school. The faith at 
least of that epistle, " the substance of things hoped 
for," is a very different faith from the faith of the 
Epistle to the Romans, if the Lutherans are correct in 
representing that to be a conscious apprehending of 



180 SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE. 

the benefits, to the individual soul, of the Saviour's 
merits and passion. Then, on the other hand, it is 
admitted, even maintained, by a very different body of 
theologians, — as by the learned Jesuit Petavius and 
many others, — that the doctrine afterwards developed 
into the Nicene and Athanasian is not to be found ex- 
plicitly in the earliest Fathers, nor even in Scripture, 
although provable by it. One polemical value of this 
view, to those who uphold it, is to show the necessity 
of an inspired Church to develop catholic truth. 

But, altliough the primitive Christians fell far short 
both of a doctrinal and ethical ideal, there is this re- 
markable distinction to be noted between the primitive 
aspects of doctrine and of ethics. The morals of the 
first Christians were certainly very far below the esti- 
mate which has been formed of them ; but the stand- 
ard by which they were measured was unvarying, 
lofty, and peculiar. Moreover, the nearer we approach 
to the fountain-head, the more definite do we find the 
statement of the Christian principle, that the source 
of religion is in the heart. On the contrary, the 
nearer w^e come to the original sources of the liistory, 
the less definite do we find the statements of doc- 
trines, and even of the facts from which the doctrines 
were afterwards inferred. And, at the very first, with 
our Lord himself and hi? apostles, as represented to 
us in the New Testament, morals come before con- 
templation, ethics before theoretics. In the patristic 
writings, theoretics assume continually an increasingly 
disproportionate value. Even within the compass of 
our New Testament, there is to be found already a 
wonderful contrast between the words of our Lord 
and such a discourse as the Epistle to the Hebrews. 
There is not wanting, indeed, to this epistle, an earnest 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 181 

moral appeal ; but the greater part of it is illustra- 
tive, argumentative, and controversial. Our Lord's 
discourses have almost all of them, a direct moral 
bearing. This character of his words is certainly more 
obvious in the three first Gospels than in the fourth ; 
and the remarkable unison of those Gospels when they 
recite the Lord's words, notwithstanding their discrep- 
ancies in some matters of fact, compel us to think that 
they embody more exact traditions of what he actually 
said than the fourth does.* 

As monuments or witnesses, discrepant in a certain 
degree as to other particulars, the evidence afforded 
by the three Synoptics to the Lord's own words is the 
most precious element in the Christian records. We 
are thereby placed at the very root of the Gospel tra- 
dition. And these words of the Lord, taken in con- 
junction with the Epistle of St. James, and with the 
first, or genuine Epistle of St. Peter, leave no reason- 
able doubt of the general character of his teaching 
having been what, for want of a better word, we must 
perhaps call " moral." But to represent the Spirit of 
Christ as a moral Spirit, is not merely to proclaim him 
as a Lawgiver, enacting the observance of a set of 



* The fourth Gospel has ahvays been supposed to have been written with 
a controversial purpose, and not to have been composed till from sixty to 
seventy years after the events which it undertakes to narrate. Some critics, 
indeed, think it was not of a date anterior to the year 140, and that it pre- 
supposes opinions of a Valentiniau character, oV CA'en Montanist, which 
would make it later still. At any rate, it cannot, by external evidence, be 
attached to the person of St. John as its author, in the sense wherein mod- 
erns understand the word " author; " that is, there is no proof that St. John 
gives his voucher as an eye and ear witness of all which is related in it. 
Many persons shrink from a bona fide examination of the " Gospel question," 
because they imagine, that, unless the four Gospels are received as jDerfectly 
genuine and authentic, — that is, entirely the composition of the persons 
whose names they bear, and without any admixture of legendary matter 
or embellishment in their narratives, — the only alternative is to suppose a 
fraudulent design in those who did compose them. This is a supposition 
from which common sense and the moral instinct alike revolt; but it is hap- 
pily not an only alternative. 



182 SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE. 

precepts, but as fulfilled with a Spirit given to him 
" without measure," of which, indeed, all men are 
partakers, who have a sense of what they " ought" to 
be and do ; yet flowing over from him, especially on 
those who perceive, in his words and in his life, princi- 
ples of ever-widening application to the circumstances 
of their own existence ; who learn from him to pene- 
trate to the root of their conscience, and to recognize 
themselves as being active elements in the moral order 
of the universe. 

We may take an illustration of the relative value in 
the apostolic age of the doctrinal and moral principles, 
by citing a case which will be allowed to be extreme 
enough. It is evident there were among the Christian 
converts, in that earliest period, those who had no 
belief in a corporeal resurrection. Some of these had, 
perhaps, been made converts from the sect of the Sad- 
ducees, and had brought with them into the Chris- 
tian congregation the same doubts or negative beliefs 
which belonged to them before their conversion. The 
Jewish Church embraced in its bosom both Pharisees 
and Sadducees : but our Lord, although he expressly 
taught a resurrection and argued with the Sadducees 
on the subject, never treated them as aliens from Is- 
rael because they did not hold that doctrine ; is much 
more severe on the moral defects and hypocrisies of 
the Pharisees than upon the doctrinal defects of the 
Sadducees. The Christian Church was recruited in 
its Jewish branch chiefly from the sect of the Phari- 
sees ; and it is somewhat difficult for us to realize the 
conversion of a Sadducee to Christianity, retaining 
his Sadducee disbelief or scepticism. But the " some 
among you who say that there is no resurrection of the 
dead " (1 Cor. xv. 12, comp. 2 Tim. ii. 18) can leave 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 183 

US in no doubt upon the matter, that there were 
Christians of Sadducee or Gentile prejudices, like 
those who mocked or those who hesitated when Paul 
preached at Athens the resurrection of the dead. But 
St. Paul argues with such elaborately in that chapter, 
without expelling them from the Church ; although 
he always represents faith in the resurrection as the 
corner-stone of the Christian belief. He endeavors 
rather to conciliate and to remove objections. First, 
he represents the rising to life again, not as miracu- 
lous or exceptional, but as a law of humanity, or at 
least of Christian and spiritualized humanity ; and he 
treats the resurrection of Christ, not as a wonder, but 
as a prerogative instance. Secondly, he shows, upon 
the doctrine of a spiritual body, how the objections 
against a resurrection from the gross conception of a 
flesh-and-blood body fall to the ground.* Now, if 
there might thus be Sadducee, or quasi-Sadducee, 
Christians in the Church, their Christianity must 
have consisted in an appreciation of the moral spirit 
of Jesus, and in an obedience, such as it might be, 
to the Christian precepts : they could have been in- 
fluenced by no expectation of a future recompense. 
Their obedience might or might not be of as high an 
order as that which is so motived : it might have been 
a mere legal habit, or an exalted disinterested life. 
Now let us compare a person of this description with 
such as those who are indicated (1 Cor. xv. 19, 32) ; 
and we cannot think that St. Paul is there speaking 
of himself personally, but of the general run of persons 



* So, in Luke xx, 27 - 35, the Sadducees are dealt with in a hke argu- 
mentative manner. They understood the doctrine of the resurrection to 
imply the rising of men with such bodies as they now have. The case 
supposed by them loses its point when the distinction is revealed between 
the animal and the angelic bodies. 



184 SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE. 

reluctant to exercise self-restraint and to expose them- 
selves to persecution for the gospel's sake, yet induced 
to do so by the hope of a future recompense. Let us 
consider these two descriptions of persons. The one 
class is defective in the Christian doctrine, and in the 
most fundamental article of the apostle's preaching ; 
the other, in the Christian moral life. Can we say 
that the one defect was more fatal than the other? 
We do not find the apostle excommunicating these 
Corinthians, who said there was no resurrection of the 
dead.* On the other hand, we know it was only in 
an extreme case that he sanctioned excommunication 
for the cause of immorality. And upon the whole, if 
we cannot effectually compare tlie person deficient in 
a true belief of the resurrection with an immoral or 
evil liver, if we can only say they were both bad 
Christians, at least we have no reason to determine 
that the good liver who disbelieved the resurrection, 
was treated by St. Paul as less of a Christian than the 
evil liver who believed it. We cannot suppose the 
evil life always to have brought on the disbelief in the 
doctrine, nor the disbelief in the doctrine to have 
issued always in an evil life. 

Now, from wliat has been said, we gather two im- 
portant conclusions : first, of the at least equal value 
of the Christian life, as compared with the Christian 



* St. Paul " delivered to Satan " (whatever that may mean) Hymenaeus 
who maintained the resurrection to be past already, most likely meaning 
it was only a moral one; but it does not appear it was for this offence he is 
so mentioned in conjunction with Alexander, and tlicir provocation is not 
described. Where he is said to have taught that tlie resurrection is past 
already, he is in companionship with Philetus, and nothing is added of any 
punisliment of either. These strange opinions afterwards liardeiied into 
heretical doctrine. Tertull. </e /'/•CESC7-?/»//o«e //ce?-., c. xxxiii.: " Paulus, iu 
Ima ad Corinthios, notat negatores et dubitatores resurrectionis. Haec 
opinio propria Sadducreorum :' partem ejus usurpat Marcion et Apelles, et 
Valentinus et si qui alii resurrectionem carnis infringunt — reque tangit C03 
qui discerent factum jam resurrectionem: id de se Valeiitini adseverant." 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 185 

doctrine ; and, secondly, of the retaining within the 
Church, both of those who were erroneous and defec- 
tive in doctrine, and of those who were by their lives 
unworthy of their profession. They who caused divis- 
ions and heresies were to be marked and avoided, but 
not expelled : and, if any called a brother were a 
notoriously immoral person, the rest were enjoined, 
no, not to eat with him ; but he was not to be refused 
the name of brother or Christian (1 Cor. v. 11). 

It would be difficult to devise a description of a 
Multitudinist church, exhibiting more saliently the 
worst defects which can attend that form, than this 
which is taken from the evidence of the Apostolic 
Epistles. We find the Pauline churches to have 
comprised, not only persons of the truest doctrinal 
insight, of the highest spiritual attainments, of mar- 
tyr-like self-devotion, but of the strangest and most 
incongruous beliefs, and of the most unequal and 
inconsistent practice. The Individualist could say 
nothing more derogatory of any Multitudinist church, 
not even of a national one ; unless, perhaps, he might 
say this, that less distinction is made within such a 
church itself, and within all modern churches, be- 
tween their better and worse members, than was made 
in the apostolic churches. Any judicial sentence of 
excommunication was extremely rare in the apos- 
tolic age, as we have seen ; and the distinction between 
the worthy and unworthy members of the Church 
was to be marked, not by any public and authorita- 
tive act, but by the operation of private conduct and 
opinion. 

The apostolic churches were thus Multitudinist, 
and they early tended to become national churches : 
from the first, they took collective names from the 



186 SEANCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE. 

localities wliere they were situate. And it was natu- 
ral and proper they should, except upon the Calvin- 
istic theory of conversion. There is some show of 
reasonable independence, some appearance of apply- 
ing the Protestant liberty of private judgment, in 
maintaining the Christian unlawfulness of the union 
of Church and State, corruption of national establish- 
ments, and like propositions ; but it will be found, 
that, where they are maintained by serious and relig- 
ious people, they are parts of a Calvinistic system, 
and are lield in connection with peculiar theories of 
grace, immediate conversion, and arbitrary call. It is 
as merely a Calvinistic and Congregational common-" 
place to speak of the unholy union of Church and 
State accomplished by Constantino, as it is a Romish 
commonplace to denounce the unholy schism accom- 
})hshed by Henry the Eighth. But, in fact, both those 
sovereigns only carried out, chiefly for their own pur- 
poses, that which was' already in preparation by the 
course of events. Even Henry would not have broken 
with the Pope, if he had not seen the pubhc mind to 
be, in some degree, ripe for it; nor would Constantine 
have taken the first steps towards an estabHshment 
of Christianity, unless the empire had already been 
growing Christian. 

Unhappily, together with liis inauguration of Mul- 
titudinism, Constantine also inaugurated a principle 
essentially at variance with it, — the principle of doc- 
trinal limitation. It is very customary to attribute the 
necessity of stricter definitions of the Christian creed, 
from time to time, to the rise of successive heresies. 
More correctly, there succeeded to the fluid state of 
Christian opinion, in the first century after Christ, a 
gradual hardening and systematizing of conflicting 



THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 187 

views ; and the opportunity of reverting to the free- 
dom of the apostolic and immediately succeeding 
periods was finally lost for many ages by the sanc- 
tion given by Constantino to the decisions of Nicaea. 
We cannot now be very good judges, whether it 
would have been possible, together with the establish- 
ment of Christianity as the imperial religion, to enforce 
forbearance between the great antagonisms which 
were then in dispute, and to have insisted on the 
maxim, that neither had a right to limit the common 
Christianity to the exclusion of the other. At all 
events, a principle at variance with a true Multitudi- 
nism was then recognized. All parties, it must be 
acknowledged, were equally exclusive ; and exclu- 
sion and definition have since been the rule for almost 
all churches, more or less, even when others of their 
principles might seem to promise a greater free- 
dom. 

That the members of a Calvinistic church, as in 
the Geneva of Calvin and Beza or in the Church of 
Scotland, should coincide with the members of the 
State ; that " election " and "• effectual call " should 
be hereditary, — is, of course, too absurd to suppose ; 
and the Congregational Calvanists are more consistent 
than the Calvinists of Established churches. Of Cal- 
vinism, as a system of doctrine, it is not here proposed 
to say anything, except that it must, of necessity, be 
hostile to every other creed ; and the members of 
a Calvinistic church can never consider themselves 
but as parted by an insuperable distinction from all 
other professors of the gospel : they cannot stand on 
a common footing, in any spiritual matter, with those 
who belong to the world ; that is, with all others 
than themselves. The exclusiveness of a Multitudi- 



188 SEAXCES HISTORIQUES DE GENEVE. 

nist church, which makes, as yet, the ecclesiastical 
creeds the terms of its communion, may cease when 
that test or limitation is repealed ; but the exclusive- 
ness of a Calvinistic church, whether free from the 
creeds or not, is inherent in its principles. There is 
no insuperable barrier between Congregationalists not 
being Calvinists, and a Multitudinist church which 
should liberate itself sufficiently from the traditional 
symbols. Doctrinal limitations in the Multitudinist 
form of church are not essential to it: upon larger 
knowledge of Christian history, upon a more thorough 
acquaintance witli the mental constitution of man, 
upon an understanding of the obstacles they present 
to a true catholicity, they may be cast off. Nor is a 
Multitudinist church necessarily or essentially hierar- 
chical in any extreme or superstitious sense : it can 
well admit, if not pure Congregationalism, a large ad- 
mixture of the Congregational spirit. Indeed, a combi- 
nation of the two principles will alone keep any church 
in health and vigor. Too great importance attached 
to a hierarchal order will lead into superstitions 
respecting apostolical succession, ministerial illumina- 
tion, supernatural sacramental influence : mere Con- 
gregationalism tends to keep ministers and people at 
a dead spiritual level. A just recognition and balance 
of the two tendencies allows the emerging of the 
most eminent of the congregation into offices for 
which they are suited ; so that neither are the true 
hierarchs and leaders of thought and manners drawn 
down and made to succumb to a mere democracy, nor 
those clothed in the priests' robe who have no true 
unction from above. And this just balance between 
the hierarchy and the congregation would be at least 
as attainable in the national form of church as in any 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 189 

other, if it were free from dogmatical tests and sim- 
ilar intellectual bondage. But there are some preju- 
dices against Nationalism which deserve to be further 
considered. 

It was natural for a Christian in the earliest period 
to look upon the Heathen State in which he found 
himself as if it belonged to the kingdom of Satan, and 
not to that of God ; and consecrated as it was, in all 
its offices, to the Heathen divinities, to consider it a 
society having its origin from the powers of darkness, 
not from the Lord of light and life. In the apostolic 
writers, this view appears rather in the First Epistle 
of St. John than with St. Paul. The horizon which 
St. John's view embraced was much narrower than 
St. Paul's : — 

" Qui mores hominum multorum vidit et urbes." 

If the love felt and inculcated by St. John towards 
the brethren was the more intense, the charity with 
which St. Paul comprehended all men was the more 
ample ; and it is not from every point of view we 
should describe St. John as pre-eminently the apostle 
of love. With St. John, "the whole world lieth in 
wickedness ; " while St. Paul exhorts " prayers and 
supplications to be made for all men, for kings, and 
for all that are in authority." Taking a wide view 
of the world and its history, we must acknowledge 
political constitutions of men to be the work of God 
himself : they are organizations into which human so- 
ciety grows by reason of the properties of the ele- 
ments which generate it. But the primitive Chris- 
tians could scarcely be expected to see, that ultimately 
the gospel was to have sway in doing more perfectly 
that which the Heathen religions were doing imper- 
fectly ; that its office should be, not only to quicken 



190 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

the spirit of the individual and to confirm his future 
hopes, but to sanctify all social relations and civil insti- 
tutions, and to enter into the marrow of the national 
life ; whereas Heathenism had only decorated the sur- 
face of it. 

Heathendom had its national churches. Indeed, the 
existence of a national church is not only a permis- 
sible thing, but is necessary to the completion of a 
national life ; and has shown itself in all nations when 
they have made any advance in civilization. It has 
been usual, but erroneous, to style the Jewish consti- 
tution a theocracy in a peculiar and exclusive sense, 
as if the combination of the religious and civil life 
had been confined to that people. Even among bar- 
barous tribes, the fetish-man establishes an authority 
over the rest, quite as much from the yearning of 
others after guidance, as from his own superior cun- 
ning. Priesthoods have always been products. Priests 
have neither been, as some would represent, a set of 
deliberate conspirators against the free thoughts of 
mankind ; nor, on the other hand, have they been the 
sole divinely commissioned channels for communica- 
tion of spiritual truth. If all priests and ministers 
of religion could, at one moment, be swept from the 
face of the earth, they would soon be reproduced. If 
the human race or a given people — and a recent gen- 
eration saw an instance of something like it in no 
distant nation — were resolved into its elements, and 
all its social and religious institutions shattered to 
pieces, it would reconstruct a political framework 
and a spiritual organization ; re-constituting govern- 
ors, laws, and magistrates, educators, and ministers 
of religion. 

The distinction between the Jewish people and the 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 191 

other nations, in respect of this so-called theocracy, 
is but feebly marked on both sides ; for the religious 
element was much stronger than has been supposed 
in other nationalities, and the priesthood was by no 
means supreme in the Hebrew State.* 

Constantly the title occurs in the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures, of " the Lord's people," with appeals to Jehovah 
as their Supreme Governor, Protector, and Judge. 
And so it is with polytheistic nations. They are the 
offspring of the gods. The deities are their guides 
and guardians, the authors of their laws and customs. 
Their worship is interwoven with the whole course 
of political and social life. It will, of course, be said, 
the entire difference is no more than this, — the object 
of worship in the one case was the true God ; in the 
other cases, idols or demons. But it is very clear to 
unprejudiced persons, that the conceptions which the 
Hebrews formed of Jehovah, though far superior to 
the conceptions embodied in any other national relig- 
ion, were obscured by figurative representations of 
him in accordance with the character of his worship- 
pers. The passions ascribed to him were not those 



*■ Previous to the time of the divided kingdom, the Jewish history pre- 
sents little which is thoroughly reliable. The taking of Jenisalem by " Shi- 
shak " is for the Hebrew history that which the sacking of Rome by the 
Gauls is for the Roman; and from no facts ascertainable is it possible to 
infer there was any early period during which the government by the 
priesthood was attended with success. Indeed, the greater probability seems 
on the side of the supposition, that the priesthood, with its distinct offices 
and charge, was constituted by royalty; and that the higher pretensions of 
the priests were not advanced till Ihe reign of Josiah. There is no evidence 
of the priesthood ever having claimed a supremacy over the kings, as if it 
had been in possession of an oracular power. In the earlier monarchy, the 
kings offer sacrifice; and the rudiments of a political and religious organi- 
zation, which prevailed in the period of the judges, cannot be appealed to 
as pre-eminently a theocracy. At any rate, nothing could be more unsuc- 
cessful as a government, whatever it might be called. Indeed, the theory 
of the Jewish theocracy seems built chiefly upon some expressions in 1 Sam. 
viii., xii. Samuel, however, with Avhose government the Israelites were 
dissatisfie<l, was not a priest, but a prophet ; and the whole of that part of 
the narrative is conceived in the prophetical, not in the priestly interest. 



192 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

most base and degrading ones attributed to their dei- 
ties by the Pagans ; and, on that account, it has been 
less easy to separate the figurative description from 
the true idea of him. The better Pagans could easily 
perceive the stories of their gods to have been, at the 
best, allegories, poetical embellishments, . inventions 
of some kind or other. Jews did not perceive that 
the attribution of wrath and jealousy to their God 
could only be by a figure of speech ; and, what is 
worse, it is difficult to persuade many Christians of 
the same thing ; and solemn inferences from the figu- 
rative expressions of the Hebrew literature have been 
crystallized into Christian doctrine. 

All things sanctioned among the Jews arc certainly 
not to be imitated by us, nor all Pagan institutions to 
be abhorred. In respect of a State religion, Jew and 
Gentile were more aUke than has been thought. All 
nations liave exhibited, in some form or another, the 
development of a public religion ; and have done so 
by reason of tendencies inherent in their nationality. 
The particular form of the religion has been due to 
various causes. Also, in periods of transition, there 
would for a time be a breaking-in upon this feature 
of national life. While prophets, philosophers, reform- 
ers, were at w^ork, or some new principle winning 
its way, the national uniformity would be disturbed. 
So it was at the first preaching of the gospel. St. 
Paul and the Lord Jesus himself offered it to the 
Jews as a nation, on the Multitudinist principle ; but, 
when they put it from them, it must make progress 
by kindling a fire in the earth, even to the dividing 
families, — two against three, and three against two. 
Thereupon Christians appear for a while to be aliens 
from their countries and commonwealths, but only for 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 193 

a while. We must not confound with an essential 
principle of Christianity that which only resulted from 
a temporary necessity. The Individualist principle 
may have been the right one for a time, and under 
certain circumstances ; not consequently the right 
one under all circumstances, nor even the possible 
one. In this question, as in that of hierarchy and 
in various ceremonial discussions, the appeal to a par- 
ticular primitive antiquity is only an appeal from the 
whole experience of Christendom to a partial expe- 
rience limited to a short period. Moreover, as to the 
mind of Jesus himself with respect to Nationalism, it 
is fully revealed in those touching words, preserved 
both in the first and third Gospels, " How often would 
I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would 
not 1 " 

Christianity was therefore compelled, as it were 
against its wiU, and in contradiction to its proper de- 
sign, to make the first steps in its progress by cutting 
across old societies, filtering into the world by indi- 
vidual conversions ; showing nevertheless, from the 
very first, its Multitudinist tendencies, and, before it 
could comprehend countries or cities, embracing fami- 
lies and households, the several members of which 
must have been on very different spiritual levels 
(Acts xvi. 31-34). The Roman world was pene- 
trated, in the first instance, by an individual and 
domestic Christianity, to which was owing the first 
conversion of our own country : in the second or 
Saxon conversion, the people were Christianized en 
masse. Such conversions as this last may not be 
thought to have been worth much : but they were 
worth the abolition of some of the grossness of idola- 
9 M 



194 THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 

try ; they effected all of which the subjects of them 
were for the time capable, and prepared the way for 
something better in another generation. The conver- 
sions operated by the German apostle Boniface were 
of the same Multitudinous kind as those of Austin and 
Paulinus in Britain, and for a like reason : in both 
cases, the development of Christianity necessarily fol- 
lowed the forms of the national life. 

In some parts of the "West, this national and natural 
tendency was counteracted by the shattering which 
ensued upon the breaking-up of the Roman Empire ; 
and in those countries especially which had been 
longest and most closely connected with Pagan Rome, 
— such as Italy itself, Spain, France, — the people 
felt themselves unable to stand alone in their spiritual 
institutions, and were glad to lean on some other prop 
and centre, so far as was still allowed them. The 
Teutonic churches were always more free than the 
churches of the Latinized peoples, though they them- 
selves had derived their Christianity from Roman mis- 
sionaries ; and among the Teutonic churches alone 
has a freedom from extraneous dominion as yet estab- 
lished itself. For a time, even these could only adopt 
the forms of doctrine and practice which were cur- 
rent in other parts of the West. But those forms 
were neither of the essence of a national church, nor 
even of the essence of a Christian church. A national 
church need not, historically speaking, be Christian ; 
nor, if it be Christian, need it be tied down to par- 
ticular forms which have been prevalent at certain 
times in Christendom. That which is essential to a 
national church is, that it should undertake to as- 
sist the spiritual progress of the nation and of the 
individuals of which it is composed, in their several 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 195 

states and stages. Not even a Christian church should 
expect all those who are brought under its influence 
to be, as a matter of fact, of one and the same stand- 
ard ; but should endeavor to raise each according 
to his capacities, and should give no occasion for a 
reaction against itself, nor provoke the Individualist 
element into separatism. It would do this if it sub- 
mitted to define itself otherwise than by its own nation- 
ality ; if it represented itself as a part rather than a 
whole ; as deriving authority, and not claiming it ; as 
imitative, and not original. 

It will do this also, if, while the civil side of the 
nation is fluid, the ecclesiastical side of it is fixed ; if 
thought and speech are free among all other classes, 
and not free among those who hold the office of 
leaders and teachers of the rest in the highest things ; 
if they are to be bound to cover up instead of open- 
ing ; and having, it is presumed, possession of the 
key of knowledge, are to stand at the door with it, 
permitting no one to enter unless by force. A national 
church may also find itself in this position ; which, 
perhaps, is our own. Its ministers may become iso- 
lated between two other parties, — between those, 
on the one hand, who draw fanatical inferences from 
formularies and principles which they themselves are 
not able or are unwilling to repudiate ; and, on the 
other, those who have been tempted, in impatience of 
old fetters, to follow free thought heedlessly wherever 
it may lead them. If our own Churchmen expect to 
discourage and repress a fanatical Christianity, with- 
out a frank appeal to reason and a frank criticism 
of Scripture, they will find themselves without any 
effectual arms for that combat ; or, if they attempt to 
check inquiry by the repetition of old forms and de- 



196 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

nunciations, they will be equally powerless, and run 
the especial risk of turning into bitterness the sin- 
cerity of those who should be their best allies, as 
friends of truth. They should avail themselves of 
the aid of all reasonable persons for enlightening the 
fanatical religionist, making no reserve of any seem- 
ingly harmless or apparently serviceable superstitions 
of their own. They should also endeavor to supply 
to the negative theologian some positive elements in 
Christianity, on grounds more sure to him than the 
assumption of an objective " faith once delivered to 
the saints," which he cannot identify with the creed 
of any church as yet known to him. 

It has been matter of great boast within the Church 
of England, in common with other Protestant churches, 
that it is founded upon the " word of God ; " a phrase 
which begs many a question, when applied to the 
canonical books of the Old and New Testaments ; a 
phrase which is never applied to them by any of the 
scriptural authors ; and which, according to Protestant 
principles, never could be applied to them by any 
sufficient authority from without. In that wliich may 
be considered the pivot Article of the Church, this 
expression does not occur, but only " Holy Scripture," 
" Canonical Books," " Old and New Testaments." It 
contains no declaration of the Bible being throughout 
supernaturally suggested, nor any intimation as to 
which portions of it were owing to a special divine 
illumination ; nor the slightest attempt at defining 
inspiration, whether mediate or immediate, whether 
through, or beside, or overruling the natural faculties 
of the subject of it ; not the least hint of the rela- 
tion between the divine and human elements in the 
composition of the biblical books. Even if the Fathers 



THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 197 

have usually considered " canonical " as synonymous 
with " miraculously inspired," there is nothing to 
show that their sense of the word must necessarily be 
applied in our own sixth Article. The word itself 
may mean either books ruled and determined by the 
Church, or regulative books ; and the employment of 
it in the Article hesitates between these two significa- 
tions. For, at one time, " Holy Scripture " and ca- 
nonical books are those books " of whose authority 
never was any doubt in the Church ; " * that is, they 
are " determined " books : and then the other, or un- 
canonical books, are described as those which " the 
Church doth not apply to establish any doctrine ; " 
that is, they are not " regulative " books. And, if the 
other principal churches of the Reformation have gone 
further in definition in this respect than our own, 
that is no reason we should force the silence of our 
Church into imison with their expressed declarations, 
but rather that we should rejoice in our comparative 
freedom.! 

The Protestant feeling among us has satisfied itself 
in a blind way with the anti-Eoman declaration, that 
" Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to 
salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor 
may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any 
man that it should be believed as an article of the 



* This clause is taken from the Wirtemburg Confession (1552), which 
proceeds, " Hanc Scripturam credimus, et confitemur esse oraciikim Spiri- 
tus Sancti, ceelestibus testimoniis ita confirmatum, ut ' si angelus de cselo 
ahud praedicaverit, anathema sit.' " 

t Thus the Helvetic Confession states : " We believe and profess, that 
the canonical Scriptures of the holy prophets and apostles, of the Old and 
New Testaments, are the very woi'd of God, and have sufficient authority 
from themselves, and not from men." The Saxon Confession refers to the 
creeds as interpreters of Scripture : " Nos vera fide amplecti omnia scripta 
prophetarem et apostolorum ; et quidem in hac ipsa nativa sententia, quae 
expressa est in Symbolis, Apostolico, Kicaeno, et Athanasiauo." — De Doc- 
trina. 



198 THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 

faith," &c. ; and without reflecting how very much is 
wisely left open in that Article. For this declaration 
itself is partly negative and partly positive. As to its 
negative part, it declares that nothing — no clause of 
creed, no decision of council, no tradition or exposi- 
tion — is to be required to be believed on peril of sal- 
vation, unless it be scriptural ; but it does not lay 
down, that everything which is contained in Scripture 
must be believed on the same peril. Or it may be 
expressed thus : the word of God is contained in 
Scripture ; whence it does not follow that it is co- 
extensive with it. The Church to which we belong 
does not put that stumbling-block before the feet of 
her members : it is their own fault if they place it 
there for themselves, authors of their own offence. 
Under the terms of the sixth Article, one may accept 
literally or allegorically, or as parable or poetry or 
legend, the story of a serpent-tempter, of an ass 
speaking with man's voice, of an arresting of the 
earth's motion, of a reversal of its motion, of waters 
standing in a solid heap, of witches, and a variety of 
apparitions. So under the terms of the sixth Article, 
every one is free in judgment as to the primeval insti- 
tution of the sabbath, the universality of the Deluge, 
the confusion of tongues, the corporeal taking-up of 
Elijah into heaven, the nature of angels, the reality 
of demoniacal possession, the personality of Satan, 
and the miraculous particulars of many events. So 
the dates and authorship of the several books received 
as canonical are not determined by any authority, nor 
their relative value and importance. 

Many evils have flowed to the people of England, 
otherwise free enough, from an extreme and too 
exclusive Scripturalism. The rudimentary education 



THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 199 

of a large number of our countrymen has been mainly 
carried on by the reading of the Scriptures. They 
are read by young children in thousands of cases, 
where no attempt could be made, even if it were de- 
sired, to accompany the reading with the safeguard 
of a reasonable interpretation. A Protestant tradition 
seems to have prevailed, unsanctioned by any of our 
formularies, that the words of Scripture are imbued 
with a supernatural property, by which their true 
sense can reveal itself even to those who, by intel- 
lectual or educational defect, would naturally be in- 
capable of appreciating it. There is no book, indeed, 
or collection of books, so rich in words which address 
themselves intelligibly to the unlearned and learned 
alike. But those who are able to do so ought to lead 
the less educated to distinguish between the different 
kinds of words which it contains ; between the dark 
patches of human passion and error which form a par- 
tial crust upon it, and the bright centre of spiritual 
truth within. 

Some years ago, a vehement controversy was car- 
ried on, whether the Scripture ought to be distributed 
in this country with or without note and comment. 
It was a question at issue between two great parties 
and two great organized societies. But those who 
advocated the view which was the more reasonable 
in itself did so in the interest of an unreasonable the- 
ory : they insisted on the authority of the Church in 
an hierarchical sense, and carried out their commen- 
tations in dry catenas of doctrine and precept. On 
the other side, the views of those who were for circu- 
lating the Bible without note or comment were partly 
superstitious, and partly antagonistic in the way of a 
protest against the hierarchical claim. The Scriptures 



200 THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 

have no doubt been received with sufficient readiness 
by all classes of English people ; for there has been 
something very agreeable to some of the feelings of 
the Englishman in the persuasion, that he possesses, 
independently of priest or clergyman, the whole mat- 
ter of his religion bound up in the four corners of a 
portable book, furnishing him, as he thinks, with an 
infallible test of the doctrine which he hears from his 
preacher ; with a substitute for all teaching, if he so 
pleases ; and with the complete apparatus necessary, 
should he desire to become the teacher of others in his 
turn. But the result of this immense circulation of 
the Scriptures for many years, by all parties, has been 
little adequate to what might have been expected be- 
forehand from the circulation of that which is in itself 
so excellent and divine. 

It is ill to be deterred from giving expression to the 
truth, or from prosecuting the investigation of it, from 
a fear of making concessions to revolutionary or cap- 
tious dispositions ; for the blame of this captiousness, 
when it exists, lies in part at the door of those who 
ignore the difficulties of others, because they may not 
feel any for themselves. To this want of wisdom on 
the part of the defenders of old opinions is to be at- 
tributed, that the noting of such differences as are 
to be found in the evangelical narratives, or in the 
books of Kings and Chronicles, takes the appearance 
of an attack upon a holy thing. The like ill conse- 
quences follow from not acknowledging freely the ex- 
tent of the human element in the sacred books ; for, 
if this were freely acknowledged on the one side, the 
divine element would be frankly recognized on the 
other. Good men — and they cannot be good without 
the Spirit of God — may err in facts, be weak in 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 201 

memory, mingle imagination with memory, be feeble 
in inferences, confound illustration with argument, be 
varying in judgment and opinion ; but the Spirit of 
absolute Truth cannot err or contradict himself, if he 
speak immediately, even in small things, accessories, 
or accidents. Still less can we suppose him to sug- 
gest contradictory accounts, or accounts only to be 
reconciled in the way of hypothesis and conjecture. 
Some things indited by the Holy Spirit may appear 
to relate to objects of which the whole cannot be em- 
braced by the human intellect ; and it may not, as to 
such objects, be possible to reconcile opposite sides of 
divine truth. Whether this is the general character 
of Scripture revelations is not now the question ; but 
the theory is supposable, and should be treated with 
respect, in regard to some portions of Scripture. To 
suppose, on the other hand, a supernatural influence 
to cause the record of that which can only issue in a 
puzzle, is to lower infinitely our conception of the 
divine dealings in respect of a special revelation. 

Thus it may be attributed to the defect of our un- 
derstandings, that we should be unable altogether to 
reconcile the aspects of the Saviour as presented to us 
in the three first Gospels and in the writings of St. 
Paul and St. John. At any rate, there were current 
in the primitive Church very distinct Christologies. 
But neither to any defect in our capacities, nor to any 
reasonable presumption of a hidden wise design, nor 
to any partial spiritual endowments in the narrators, 
can we attribute the difficulty, if not impossibility, of 
reconciling the genealogies of St. Matthew and St. 
Luke, or the chronology of the Holy Week, or the 
accounts of the resurrection ; nor to any mystery in 
the subject-matter can be referred the uncertainty 



202 THE NATIONAL CHUKCH. 

in which the New Testament writings leave us as to 
the descent of Jesus Christ according to the flesh, 
whether by his mother he were of the tribe of Judah 
or of the tribe of Levi. 

If the national Church is to be true to the Multitu- 
dinist principle, and to correspond ultimately to the 
national character, the freedom of opinion which be- 
longs to the English citizen should be conceded to the 
English Churchman ; and the freedom which is already 
practically enjoyed by the members of the congrega- 
tion cannot without injustice be denied to its ministers. 
A minister may rightly be expected to know more of 
theology than the generality, or even than the best 
informed of the laity ; but it is a strange ignoring of 
the constitution of human minds to expect all min- 
isters, however much they may know, to be of one 
opinion in theoreticals, or the same person to be sub- 
ject to no variation of opinion at different periods of 
his life. And it may be worth while to consider how 
far a liberty of opinion is conceded by our existing 
laws, civil and ecclesiastical. Along with great open- 
ings for freedom, it will be found there are some 
restraints, or appearances of restraints, which require 
to be removed. 

As far as opinion privately entertained is concerned, 
the liberty of the English clergyman appears already 
to be complete ; for no ecclesiastical person can be 
obliged to answer interrogations as to his opinions, 
nor be troubled for that which he has not actually 
expressed, nor be made responsible for inferences 
which other people may draw from his expressions.* 

* The oath ex officio in the ecclesiastical law is defined to be an oath 
whereby any person may be obliged to make any presentment of any crime 
or offence, or to confess or accuse himself or herself of any criminal matter 
or thing, whereby he or she may be liable to any censure, penalty, or pun- 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 203 

Still, though there may be no power of inquisition 
into the private opinions either of ministers or people 
in the Church of England, there may be some inter- 
ference with the expression of them ; and a great 
restraint is supposed to be imposed upon the clergy 
by reason of their subscription to the Thirty-nine 
Articles. Yet it is more difficult than might be 
expected to define what is the extent of the legal 
obligation of those who sign them; and in this case 
the strictly legal obligation is the measure of the 
moral one. Subscription may be thought even to 
be inoperative upon the conscience by reason of its 
vagueness : for the act of subscription is enjoined, 
but its effect or meaning nowhere plainly laid down ; 
and it does not seem to amount to more than an 
acceptance of the Articles of the Church as the for- 
mal law to which the subscriber is in some sense 
subject. What that subjection amounts to must be 
gathered elsewhere ; for it does not appear on the face 
of the subscription itself. 

ishment whatsoever. 4 Jac. : •' The lords of the council at Whitehall de- 
manded of Popham and Coke, chief justices, upon motion made by the 
Commons in Parliament, in what cases the ordinary may examine any 
person ex officio upon oath." They answered, — 1. That the ordinary can- 
not restrain any man, ecclesiastical or temporal, to swear generally to 
answer such interrogations as shall be administered to him, &c. 2. That 
no man, ecclesiastical or teinporal, shall be examined upon the secret 
thoughts of his heart, or of his secret opinion ; but something ought to be 
objected against him which he hath spoken or done. Thus, 13 Jac, Dighton 
and Holt were committed by the high commissioners, because, they being 
convented for slanderous words against the Book of Common Prayer and 
the government of the Church, and being tendered the oath to be examined, 
they refused. The case being brought before the King's Bench on habeas 
corpus, Coke, C. J., gave the determination of the Court, " That they ought 
to be delivered, because their examination is made to cause them to ac- 
cuse themselves of a breach of a penal law, which is against law; for they 
ought to proceed against them by witnesses, and not enforce them to take 
an oath to accuse themselves." Then, by 13 Car. H., c. 12, it was enacted, 
" That it shall not be lawful for any person, exercising ecclesiastical juris- 
diction, to tender or administer to any person whatsoever the oath usually 
called the oath ex officio, or any other oath, whereby such person, to whom 
the same is tendered or administered, may be charged, or compelled to 
confess or accuse, or to purge himself or herself, of any criminal matter or 
thing," &c. Burn's EccL Law, iii. 14, 15, ed. Phillimore. 



204 THE NATIONAL CHUKCH. 

The ecclesiastical authority on the subject is to be 
found in the canons of 1603, the fifth and the thirty- 
sixth. The fifth, indeed, may be applicable, theoreti- 
cally, both to lay and to ecclesiastical persons : practi- 
cally, it can only concern those of whom subscription 
is really required. It is entitled, " Impugners of the 
Articles of Religion established in this Church of 
England censured." — " Whosoever shall hereafter 
affirm that any of the nine and thirty Articles, &c., 
are in any part superstitious or erroneous, or such as 
he may not with a good conscience subscribe unto, let 
him be excommunicated," &c. "We need not stay to 
consider what the effects of excommunication might 
be, but rather attend to the definition which the canon 
itself supplies of " impugning." It is stated to be the 
affirming that any of the Thirty-nine Articles are in 
any part " superstitious or erroneous." Yet an Arti- 
cle may be very inexpedient, or become so ; may be 
unintelligible, or not easily intelligible to ordinary 
people ; it may be controversial, and such as to pro- 
voke controversy, and keep it alive when otherwise it 
would subside ; it may revive unnecessarily the re- 
membrance of dead controversies, all or any of these, 
without being " erroneous ; " and, though not " super- 
stitious," some expressions may appear so, — such as 
those which seem to impute an occult operation to the 
sacraments. The fifth canon does not touch the af- 
firming any of these things, and more especially that 
the Articles present truths disproportionately, and rel- 
atively to ideas not now current. 

The other canon which concerns subscription is the 
thirty-sixth, which contains two clauses, explanatory, 
to some extent, of the meaning of ministerial sub- 
scription, " That he alloiveth the Book of Articles," &c. ; 



THE NATIONAL CHUKCH. 205 

and " that he acknoivledg-eth the same to be agreeable 
to the word of God." We " allow " many things which 
we do not think wise or practically useful ; as the less 
of two evils ; or an evil which cannot be remedied, or 
of which the remedy is not attainable, or is uncertain 
in its operation, or is not in our power, or concerning 
which there is much difference of opinion ; or where 
the initiation of any change does not belong to our- 
selves, nor the responsibility belong to ourselves, 
either of the things as they are, or of searching for 
something better. Many acquiesce in, submit to, 
" allow," a law, as it operates upon themselves, which 
they would be horror-struck to have enacted ; yet they 
would gladly and in conscience " allow " and submit 
to it as part of a constitution under which they live, 
against which they would never think of rebelling, 
which they would on no account undermine, for the 
many blessings of which they are fully grateful : they 
would be silent and patient, rather than join, even in 
appearance, the disturbers and breakers of its laws. 
Secondly, he " acknowledge th " the same to be agree- 
able to the word of God. Some distinctions may be 
founded upon the word '^ acknowledge." He does not 
maintain nor regard it as self-evident, nor originate it 
as his own feeling, spontaneous opinion, or conviction : 
but when it is suggested to him, put in a certain 
shape ; when the intention of the framers is borne in 
mind, their probable purpose and design explained, to- 
gether with the difficulties which surrounded them, — 
he is not prepared to contradict, and he acknowledges. 
There is a great deal to be said which had not at first 
occurred to him. Many other better and wiser men 
than himself have acknowledged the same thing : why 
should he be obstinate ? Besides, he is young, and 



206 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

has plenty of time to reconsider it ; or he is old, and 
continues to submit out of habit, and it would be too 
absurd, at his time of life, to be setting up as a church 
reformer. 

But, after all, the important phrase is, that the Ar- 
ticles are " agreeable to the word of God." This 
cannot mean that the Articles are precisely co-exten- 
sive with the Bible, much less of equal authority with 
it as a whole. Neither separately nor altogether do 
they embody all which is said in it ; and inferences 
which they draw from it are only good relatively, and 
secundum quid and quatenus concordant. If their 
terms are biblical terms, they must be presumed to 
have the same sense in the Articles which they have 
in the Scripture ; and, if they are not all scriptural 
ones, they undertake in the pivot Article not to con- 
tradict the Scripture. The Articles do not make any 
assumption of being interpretations of Scripture, or 
developments of it. The greater must include the 
less ; and the Scripture is the greater. 

On the other hand, there may be some things in the 
Articles which could not be contained, or have not 
been contained, in the Scripture ; such as propositions 
or clauses concerning historical facts more recent than 
the Scripture itself: for instance, that there never has 
been any doubt in the Church concerning the books 
of the New Testament. For, without including such 
doubts as a fool might have, or a very conceited per- 
son ; without carrying doubts, founded upon mere crit- 
icism and internal evidence only, to such an extent as 
a Baur, or even an Ewald, — there was a time when 
certain books existed, and certain others were not as 
yet written : for example, the Epistles of St. Paul were 
anterior, probably, to all of the Gospels, certainly to 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 20T 

that of St. John ; and of course the Church could not 
receive without doubt books not as yet composed. But 
as the canon grew, book after book emerging into ex- 
istence and general reception, there were doubts as to 
some of them, for a longer or shorter period, either 
concerning their authorship or their authority. The 
framers of the Articles were not deficient in learning, 
and could not have been ignorant of the passages in 
Eusebius where the different books current in Chris- 
tendom in his time are classified as genuine or ac- 
knowledged, doubtful and spurious. If there be an 
erroneousness in such a statement, as that there never 
was any doubt in the Church concerning the Book of 
the Revelation, the Epistle to the Hebrews, or the Sec- 
ond of St. Peter, it cannot be an erroneousness in the 
sense of the fifth canon, nor can it be at variance with 
the word of God according to the thirty-sixth. Such 
things in the Articles as are beside the Scripture are 
not in the contemplation of the canons. Much less 
can historical questions not even hinted at in the Ar- 
ticles be excluded from free discussion ; such as con- 
cern the dates and composition of the several books, 
the compilation of the Pentateuch, the introduction of 
Daniel into the Jewish canon, and the like, with some 
books of the New Testament, — the date and author- 
ship, for instance, of the fourth Gospel. 

Many of those who would themselves wish the Chris- 
tian theology to run on in its old forms of expression, 
nevertheless deal with the opinions of others, which 
they may think objectionable, fairly as opinions. There 
will always, on the other hand, be a few whose favor- 
ite mode of warfare it will be to endeavor to gain a 
victory over some particular person who may hold 
opinions they dislike, by entangling him in the formu- 



208 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

laries. Nevertheless, our formularies do not lend 
themselves very easily to this kind of warfare. Con- 
tra retiarium baculo. 

We have spoken hitherto of the signification of sub- 
scription which may be gathered from the canons. 
There is also a statute, a law of the land, which for- 
bids, under penalties, the advisedly and directly con- 
tradicting any of them by ecclesiastics ; and requires 
subscription, with declaration of " assent," from ben- 
eficed persons. This statute (13 Eliz. c. 12), three 
hundred years old, like many other old enactments, 
is not found to be very applicable to modern cases ; 
although it is only about fifty years ago that it was 
said by Sir William Scott to be in viridi observan- 
tia. Nevertheless, its provisions would not easily be 
brought to bear on questions likely to be raised in our 
own days. The meshes are too open for modern re- 
finements ; for, not to repeat concerning the word 
" assent" what has been said concerning " allow" and 
" acknowledge," let the Articles be taken according to 
an obvious classification. Forms of expression, partly 
derived from modern modes of thought on metapliys- 
ical subjects, partly suggested by a better acquaint- 
ance than heretofore with the unsettled state of 
Christian opinion in the immediately post-apostolic 
age, may be adopted with respect to the doctrines 
enunciated in the five first Articles, without directly 
contradicting, impugning, or refusing assent to them, 
but passing by the side of them, — as with respect 
to the humanifying of the Divine Word and to the 
Divine Personalities. Then those which we have 
called the pivot Articles, concerning the rule of faith 
and the sufficiency of Scripture, are happily found to 
make no efiectual provision for an absolute uniformity, 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 209 

when once the freedom of interpretation of Scripture 
is admitted : they cannot be considered as interpreting 
their own interpreter. This has sometimes been called 
a circular proceeding: it might be resembled to a 
lever becoming its own fulcrum. The Articles, again, 
which have a Lutheran and Calvinistic sound, are 
found to be equally open, because they are, for the 
most part, founded on the very words of Scripture ; 
and these, while worthy of unfeigned assent, are capa- 
ble of different interpretations. Indeed, the Calvin- 
istic and Arminian views have been declared by a 
kind of authority to be both of them tenable under 
the seventeenth Article ; and, if the scriptural terms 
of " election " and " predestination " may be inter- 
preted in an anti-Calvinistic sense, " faith," in the 
tenth and following Articles, need not be understood 
in the Lutheran. These are instances of legitimate 
affixing different significations to terms in the Arti- 
cles, by reason of different interpretations of scriptural 
passages. 

If, however, the Articles of religion and the law of 
the Church of England be in effect liberal, flexible, or 
little stringent, is there any necessity for expressing 
dissatisfaction with them, any sufficient provocation to 
change ? There may be much more liberty in a 
church like our own, the law of which is always in- 
terpreted, according to the English spirit, in the man- 
ner most favorable to those who are subject to its dis- 
cipline, than in one which, whether free or not from 
Articles, might be empowered to develop doctrine 
and to denounce new heresies. Certainly the late 
Mr. Irving, if he had been a clergyman of the Church 
of England, could scarcely have been brought under 
the terms of any ecclesiastical law of ours, for the 

N 



210 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

expression of opinions upon an abstruse question 
respecting the humanity of Jesus Christ, which sub- 
jected him to degradation in the Presbyterian Church 
of Scotland. And this transition state may be a state 
of as much liberty as the Church of England could in 
any way as yet have been enabled to attain, — a state 
of greater practical liberty than has been attained in 
churches supposed to be more free. It is a state 
of safety and protection to those who use it wisely, 
under wliich a further freedom may be prepared. 

But it is not a state which ouglit to be considered 
final, either by the church itself or by the nation. It 
is very well for provisions, which cease to bo easily 
applicable to modern cases, to be suffered to ^ into 
desuetude ; but, after falling into desuetude^f they 
should be repealed. Desuetude naturally leads to 
repeal. Obsolete tests are a blot upon a modern sys- 
tem ; and there is always some danger lest an anti- 
quated rule may be unexpectedly revived for the sake 
of an odious individual application. When it has out- 
lived its general regulative power, it may still be a 
trap for the weaker consciences ; or when it has be- 
come powerless as to penal consequences, it may serve 
to give a point to invidious imputations. 

And, further than this, the present apparent strin- 
gency of subscription as required of the clergy of the 
Church of England does not belong to it as part of its 
foundation ; is not even coeval with its reconstruction 
at the period of the Reformation : for the canons are 
of the date of 1603 ; and the act requiring the public 
reading of the Thirty-nine Articles, with declaration 
of assent by a beneficed person after his induction, is 
the 13th Elizabeth. An enactment prohibiting the 
bishops from requiring the subscriptions under the 



THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 211 

third article of the thirty-sixth canon, together with 
the repeal of 13th Elizabeth, except as to its second 
section, would relieve many scruples and make the 
Church more national, without disturbing its ulti- 
mate law. The Articles would then obviously be- 
come for the clergy that which they are for the laity 
of the Church, " articles of peace, not to be contra- 
dicted by her sons," as the wise and liberal Burnet 
described them ; and there is forcible practical reason 
for leaving the Thirty-nine Articles, as the ultimate 
law of the Church, not to be contradicted, and for 
confining relaxation to the abolition of subscrip- 
tion. 

A large portion of the Articles were originally 
directed against the corruptions of the Church of 
Rome ; and, whatever may be thought of the unadvis- 
ableness of retaining tests to exclude opinions which 
few think of reviving in their old shape, these Roman 
doctrhies and practices are seen to be flourishing in 
full life and vigor. And considering the many griev- 
ous provocations which the people of England have 
suffered from the Papacy, both in ancient and modern 
times, they would naturally resist any change wliicli 
might, by possibility, weaken the barriers between 
the National Church and the encroachments of the 
Church of Rome. It is evident, moreover, that the 
act of signature to the Thirty-nine Articles contributes 
nothing to the exclusion from the Church of Romish 
views ; for, as it is, opinions and practices prevail 
among some of the clergy, which are extremely dis- 
tasteful to the generality of the people, by reason of 
their Romish character. Those of the Articles which 
condemn the Romish errors cannot themselves be 
made so stringent as to bar altogether the intrusion 



212 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

of some opinion of a Roman tone, which the Reformers, 
if they could have foreseen it, might have desired to 
exckide, and which is equally strange and repugnant 
to the common sense of the nation. No act of sub- 
scription can supply this defect of stringency in the 
formulas themselves. Now, it would be impossible to 
secure the advantages of freedom in one direction, 
without making it equal as far as it goes. We must 
endeavor to liberate ourselves from the dominion of 
an unwise and really unchristian principle with the 
fewest possible risks and inconveniences. 

Considering, therefore, the practical difficulties 
which would beset any change, and especially those 
which would attend either the excepting of the anti- 
Romish articles from repeal or including them in it, 
any attempt at a relaxation of the clerical test should 
prudently confine itself in our generation to an aboli- 
tion of the act of subscription ; leaving the Articles 
themselves protected, by the second section of the 
statute of Elizabeth and by the canons, against direct 
contradiction or impugning. 

For, the act of subscription being abolished, there 
would disappear the invidious distinction between the 
clergy and laity of the same communion, as if there 
were separate standards for each of belief and morals. 
There would disappear, also, a semblance of a promis- 
sory oath on a subject which a promise is incapable 
of reaching. No promise can reach fluctuations of 
opinion and personal conviction. Open teaching can, 
it is true, if it be thought wise, be dealt with by the 
law and its penalties ; but the law should content it- 
self with saying, " You shall not teach or proclaim in 
derogation of my formularies : " it should not require 
any act which appears to signify " I think." Let the 



THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 213 

security, be either the penal or the moral one, not a 
commingling of the two. It happens continually, that 
able and sincere persons are deterred from entering 
the ministry of the national Church by this considera- 
tion : they would be willing to be subject to the law 
forbidding them to teach Arianism or Pelagianism ; 
(as what sensible man in our day would desire to teach 
them ?) but they do not like to say, or be thought to 
say, that they assent to a certain number of anti-Arian 
and anti-Pelagian propositions. And the absence of 
Tigorous tone, not confined to one party in the Church, 
which is to be lamented of late years in its ministry, 
is to be attributed to the reluctance of the stronger 
minds to enter an order in which their intellects may 
not have free play. The very course of preparation 
for ordination — tied down as it is in one department 
to the study of the Articles, which must perforce be 
proved consentaneous to the " word of God " accord- 
ing to some, and to " Catholic antiquity " according 
to others — has an enervating effect upon the mind, 
which is compelled to embrace much scholastic mat- 
ter, not as a history of doctrine, but as a system of 
truth of which it ought to be convinced. 

It may be easy to urge invidiously, with respect to 
the impediments now existing to undertaking office in 
the national Church, that there are other sects which 
persons dissatisfied with her formularies may join, and 
where they may find scope for their activity with lit- 
tle intellectual bondage. Nothing can be said here, 
whether or not there might be elsewhere bondage at 
least as galling, of a similar or another kind. But 
the service of the national Church may well be re- 
garded in a different light from the service of a sect. 
It is as properly an organ of the national life as a 



214 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

magistracy or a legislative estate. To set barriers 
before the entrance upon its functions, by limitations 
not absolutely required by public policy, is to infringe 
upon the birthright of the citizens ; and to lay down 
as an alternative to striving for more liberty of thought 
and expression within the Church of the nation, that 
those who are dissatisfied may sever themselves and 
join a sect, would be paralleled by declaring to polit- 
ical reformers that they are welcome to expatriate 
themselves, if they desire any change in the existing 
forms of the constitution. The suggestion of the al- 
^ternative is an insult : if it could be enforced, it would 
be a grievous wrong. 

There is another part of the subject which may be 
slightly touched upon in this place, — that of the en- 
dowment of the national Church. This was well de- 
scribed by Mr. Coleridge as the Nationality. In a 
certain sense, indeed, the nation, or state, is lord par- 
amount over all the property within its boundaries ; 
but it provides for the usufruct of the property in two 
different ways. The usufruct of private property, as 
it is called, descends, according to our laws, by inher- 
itance or testamentary disposition ; and no specific 
services are attached to its enjoyment. The usufruct 
of that which Coleridge called the Nationality circu- 
lates freely among all the families of the nation. The 
enjoyment of it is subject to the performance of spe- 
cial services ; is attainable only by the possession of 
certain qualifications. In accordance with the strong 
tendency in England to turn every interest into 
a right of so-called private property, the nomina- 
tions to the benefices of the national Church have 
come, by an abuse, to be regarded as part of the 
estates of patrons, instead of trusts, as they really 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 215 

are. No trustee of any analogous property, of a 
grammar-school for instance, would think of selling 
his right of appointment : he would consider the 
proper exercise of the trust his duty. Much less 
would any court of law acknowledge that a beneficial 
interest in the trust-property was an asset belonging 
to the estate of the trustee. If the nomination to the 
place of a schoolmaster ought to be considered as 
purely fiduciary, much more should the nomination of 
a spiritual person to his parochial charge. Objections 
are made against our own national Church, founded 
upon these anomalies, which may in time be rectified. 
Others are made against the very principle of endow- 
ment. 

It is said that a fixed support of the minister tends 
to paralyze both him and his people ; making him 
independent of his congregation, and drying up their 
liberality. It would be difficult, perhaps, to say which 
would be the greater evil, — for a minister to be in 
all things independent of his people, or in all things 
dependent upon them. But the endowed minister 
is by no means independent of all restraints ; as, for 
instance, of the law of his Church, and, which is much 
more, of public opinion, especially of the opinion of 
his own people. The unendowed minister is depend- 
ent in all things, both upon the opinion of his people 
and upon their liberality ; and frequent complaints 
transpire among Nonconformists, of the want of some 
greater fixity in the position and sustentation of their 
ministers. In the case of a nationally endowed 
church, the people themselves contribute little or 
nothing to its support. The Church of England is 
said to be the richest church in Europe ; which is 
probably not true : but its people contribute less to its 



216 THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 

support than the members of any other church in 
Christendom, whether established or voluntary. And, 
if the contributing personally to the support of the 
ministry were the only form which Christian liberality 
could take, the stopping-up the outflow of it would 
be an incalculable evil. But it is not so : there are 
a multitude of other objects, even though the princi- 
pal minister in a parish or other locality were suffi- 
ciently provided for, to give an outlet for Christian 
liberality. It may flow over from more favored locali- 
ties, where churches are sufficiently endowed, into 
more destitute districts and into distant lands. This 
is so with ourselves ; and those who are familiar with 
the statistics of the numerous voluntary societies in 
England for Christian and philanthropic purposes, 
know to how great an extent the bulk of the support 
they meet with is derived from the contributions of 
Churchmen. There is reason to think, on the other 
hand, that the means and willingness to give, on the 
part of Nonconforming congregations, are already 
mainly exhausted in making provision for their min- 
isters. 

Reverting to the general interest in the Nationality, 
it is evidently twofold. First, in the free circulation 
of a certain portion of the real property of the coun- 
try, inherited not by blood, nor through the accident 
of birth, but by merit and in requital for certain 
performances. It evidently belongs to the popular 
interest that this circulation should be free from all 
unnecessary limitations and restraints, — speculative, 
antiquarian and the like ; and be regulated, as far as 
attainable, by fitness and capacity for a particular pub- 
lic service. Thus by means of the national endowment 
there would take place a distribution of property to 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 217 

every family in the country, unencumbered by family 
provisions at each succession; a distribution in like 
manner of the best kind of education, of which the ef- 
fects would not be worn out in one or two generations. 
The Church theoretically is the most popular, it might 
be said the most democratic, of all our institutions ; 
its ministers, as a spiritual magistracy, true tribunes 
of the people. Secondly, the general interest in the 
Nationality, as the material means whereby the high- 
est services are obtained for the general good, re- 
quires that no artificial discouragements should limit 
the number of those who otherwise would be enabled 
to become candidates for the service of the Church ; 
that nothing should prevent the choice and recruiting 
of the Church ministers from the whole of the citizens. 
As a matter of fact, we find that nearly one half of our 
population are at present more or less alienated from 
the communion of the national Church ; and do not, 
therefore, supply candidates for its ministry. Instead 
of securing the excellences and highest attainments 
from the whole of the people, it secures them, by 
means of the national reserve, only from one half: 
the rest are either not drawn up into the Christian 
ministry at all, or undertake it in connection with 
schismatical bodies, with as much detriment to the 
national unity as to the ecclesiastical. 

We all know how the inward moral life — or spirit- 
ual life on its moral side, if that term be preferred — 
is nourished into greater or less vigor by means of 
the conditions in which the moral subject is placed. 
Hence, if a nation is really worthy of the name, 
conscious of its own corporate life, it will develop 
itself on one side into a Church, wherein its citizens 
may grow up and be perfected in their spiritual na- 
10 



218 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

tiire. If there is within it a consciousness, that, as a 
nation, it is fulfilHng no unimportant office in the 
world, and is, under the order of Providence, an in- 
strument in giving the victory to good over evil, and 
to happiness over misery, it will not content itself with 
the rough adjustments and rude lessons of law and 
police, but will throw its elements, or the best of them, 
into another mould, and constitute out of them a soci- 
ety, which is in it, though in some sense not of it ; 
which is another, yet the same. 

That each one born into the nation is, together with 
his civil rights, born into a membership or privilege, 
as belonging to a spiritual society, places him at once 
in a relation which must tell powerfully upon his spir- 
itual nature. For the sake of the reaction upon its 
own merely secular interests, the nation is entitled to 
provide from time to time, that the Church teaching 
and forms of one age do not traditionally harden so as 
to become exclusive barriers in a subsequent one, and 
so the moral growth of those who are committed to 
the hands of the Church be checked, or its influences 
confined to a comparatively few. And the objects of 
the care of the State and of the Church will nearly 
coincide ; for the former desires all its people to be 
brought under the improving influence, and the latter 
is willing to embrace all who have even the rudi- 
ments of the moral life. 

And if the objects of the care of each nearly 
coincide, when the office of the Church is properly 
understood, so errors and mistakes in defining Church- 
membership, or in constituting a repulsive mode of 
Church-teaching, are fatal to the purposes both of 
Church and State alike. 

It is a great misrepresentation to exhibit the State 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 219 

as alljdng itself with one of many sects, — a misrep- 
resentation, the blame of which does not rest wholly 
with political persons, nor with the partisans of sects 
adverse to that which is supposed to be unduly pre- 
ferred. It cannot concern a State to develop as part 
of its own organization a machinery or system of 
relations founded on the possession of speculative 
truth. Speculative doctrines should be left to philo- 
sophical schools. A national Church must be con- 
cerned with the ethical development of its members ; 
and the wrong of supposing it to be otherwise is 
participated by those of the clericalty who consider 
the Church of Clirist to be founded, as a society, on 
the possession of an abstractedly true and super- 
naturally communicated speculation concerning God, 
rather than upon the manifestation of a divuie life in 
man. 

It has often been made matter of reproach to the 
Heathen State religions, that they took little concern 
in the moral life of the citizens. To a certain extent 
this is true ; for the Heathens of classical history had 
not generally the same conceptions of morals as we 
have. But, as far as their conceptions of morals 
reached, their Church and State were mutually bound 
together, not by a material alliance, nor by a gross 
compact of pay and preferment passing between the 
civil society and the priesthood, but by the penetrating 
of the whole public and domestic life of the nation 
with a religious sentiment. All the social relations 
were consecrated by the feeling of their being entered 
into and carried on under the sanction, under the 
very impulse of Deity. Treaties and boundaries, buy- 
ing and selling, marrying, judging, deliberating on af- 
fairs of State, spectacles and all popular amusements, 



220 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

were under the protection of Divinity : all life was a 
worship. It can very well be understood how philoso- 
phers should be esteemed atheists, when they began to 
speculate upon origins, causes, abstract being, and the 
Hke. 

Certainly the sense of the individual conscience was 
not sufficiently developed under those old religions. 
Their observances, once penetrated with a feeling 
of present Deity, became, in course of time, mere 
dry and superstitious forms. But the glory of the 
gospel would only be partial and one-sided, if, while 
quickening the individual conscience and the expec- 
tation of individual immortality, it had no spirit to 
quicken the national life. An isolated salvation, the 
rescuing of one's self, the reward, the grace bestowed 
on one's own labors, the undisturbed repose, the 
crown of glory in which so many have no share, the 
finality of the sentence on both hands, — reflections 
on such expectations as these may make stubborn 
martyrs and sour professors, but not good citizens ; 
rather tend to unfit men for this world, and in so 
doing, prepare them very ill for that which is to 
come. 

But in order to the possibility of recruiting any 
national ministry from the whole of the nation, in 
order to the operation upon the nation at large of the 
special functions of its Church, no needless intellectual 
or speculative obstacles should be interposed. It is 
not to be expected that terms of communion could be 
made so large, as by any possibility to comprehend in 
the national Church the whole of such a free nation 
as our own. There will always be those, who, from 
a conscientious scruple, or from a desire to define, or 
from peculiarities of temper, will hold aloof from tlie 



THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 221 

religion and the worship of the majority ; and it is not 
desirable that it shonld be otherwise, so long as the 
national unity and the moral action of society are not 
thereby seriously impaired. No doubt, speaking po- 
litically, and regarding merely the peacefulness with 
which the machinery of ordinary executive govern- 
ment can be carried on, it has proved very advan- 
tageous to the State, that an Established Church 
has existed in this country, to receive the shafts 
which otherwise might have been directed against it- 
self. Ill-humor has evaporated harmlessly in Dissent, 
which might otherwise have materially deranged the 
body politic ; and village Hampdens have acquired a 
parochial renown sufficient to satisfy their ambition, 
in resistance to a church-rate, whose restlessness 
might have urged them to dispute, even to prison and 
spoiling of their goods, the lawfulness of a war-tax. 
But whatever root of conscientiousness and truth- 
seeking there has been in Nonconformity, whatever 
amount of indirect good is produced by the emulation 
of the different religious bodies, whatever safety to 
social order by the escapement for temper so pro- 
vided, the moral influence of the better people in 
their several neighborhoods is neutralized or lost for 
want of harmony and concentration, when the aliena- 
tion from the national Church reaches the extent 
which it has done in our country. Even in the more 
retired localities, industry, cleanliness, decency in the 
homes of the poor, school discipline, and truthfulness, 
are encouraged far less than they might otherwise be, 
by reason of the absence of religious unanimity in the 
superior classes. And if the points of speculation and 
of form which separate Dissenters from the Church of 
England were far more important than they are, and 



222 THE NATIONAL CHUKCH. 

the approximative truth preponderatingly upon the 
side of Dissent, it would do infinitely more harm by 
the dissension which it creates, than it possibly could 
accomplish of good by a greater correctness in doc- 
trine and ecclesiastical constitution. If this statement 
concerns Dissent itself on one side, it concerns the 
Church on the other, or rather those who so limit the 
terms of its communion as to provoke, and — as human 
beings are constituted — to necessitate separation from 
it. It is stated by Neal,* that if the alterations in 
the Prayer-book, recommended by the commissioners 
of 1689, had been adopted, it would " in all probability 
have brought in three parts in four of the Dissenters." 
No such result could be expected from any " amend- 
ments " or " concessions " now. Much less could any- 
thing be hoped for by means of a " conference." But 
it concerns the State, on the highest grounds of public 
policy, to rectify, as far as possible, the mistakes com- 
mitted in former times by itself, or by the Church 
under its sanction ; and without aiming at an univer- 
sal comprehension, which would be Utopian, to suffer 
the perpetuation of no unnecessary barriers, excluding 
from the communion or the ministry of the national 
Church. 

There are, moreover, besides those who have joined 
the ranks of Dissent, many others holding aloof from 
the Church of England by reason of its real or sup- 
posed dogmatism, whose co-operation in its true work 
would be most valuable to it, and who cannot be- 
come utterly estranged from it, without its losing ulti- 
mately its popular influence and its national charac- 
ter. If those who distinguish themselves in science 

* Hist. Pur.; iv. p. 618. 



THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 223 

and literature cannot, in a scientific and literary age, 
be effectually and cordially attached to the Church of 
their nation, they must sooner or later be driven into 
a position of hostility to it. They may be as indis- 
posed to the teaching of the majority of Dissenters as 
to that which they conceive to be the teaching of the 
Church ; but the Church, as an organization, will of 
necessity appear to be the most damaged by a scientific 
criticism of a supposed Christianity common to it with 
other bodies. Many personal and social bonds have 
retarded hitherto an issue which from time to time 
has threatened a controversy between our science and 
our theology. It would be a deplorable day when the 
greatest names on either side should be found in con- 
flict ; and theology should only learn to acknowledge, 
after a defeat, that there are no irreconcilable differ- 
ences between itself and its opponents. 

It is sometimes said with a sneer, that the scientific 
men and the men of abstractions will never change 
the religions of the world : and yet Christianity has 
certainly been very different from what it would have 
been without the philosophies of a Plato and an Aris- 
totle ; and a Bacon and a Newton exercise an influ- 
ence upon the biblical theology of Englishmen. They 
have modified, though they have not made it. The 
more diffused science of the present day wiU further 
modify it. And the question seems to narrow itself to 
this : How can those, who differ from each other intel- 
lectually in such variety of degrees as our more edu- 
cated and our less educated classes, be comprised un- 
der the same formularies of one national Church ; be 
supposed to follow them, assent to them, appropriate 
them, in one spirit ? If such formularies embodied 
only an ethical result addressed to the individual and 



224 THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 

to society, the speculative difficulty would not arise ; 
but as they present a fair and substantial representa- 
tion of the biblical records, incorporating their letter 
and presupposing their historical element, precisely 
the same problem is presented to us, intellectually, 
as English Churchmen or as biblical Christians. 

It does not seem to be contradicted, that, when 
church formularies adopt the words of Scripture, these 
must have the same meaning, and be subject to the 
same questions, in the formularies, as in the Scripture. 
And we may go somewhat further, and say, that the 
historical parts of the Bible, when referred to or pre- 
supposed in the formularies, have the same value in 
them which they have in their original seat ; and this 
value may consist rather in their significance, in the 
ideas which they awaken, than in the scenes them- 
selves which they depict. And as Churchmen, or as 
Christians, we may vary as to their value in particu- 
lars, — that is, as to the extent of the verbal accuracy 
of a history, or of its spiritual significance, — without 
breaking with our communion or denying our sacred 
name. These varieties will be determined partly by 
the peculiarities of men's mental constitution, partly 
by the nature of their education, circumstances, and 
special studies. And neither should the idealist con- 
demn the literalist, nor the literalist assume the right 
of excommunicating the idealist : they are really fed 
with the same truths ; the literalist unconsciously, the 
idealist with reflection. Neither can justly say of the 
other that he undervalues the sacred writings, or that 
he holds them as inspired less properly than himself. 

The application of ideology to the interpretation 
of Scripture, to the doctrines of Christianity, to the 
formularies of the Church, may undoubtedly be car- 



THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 225 

ried to an excess, — may be pushed so far as to leave 
ill tlie sacred records no historical residue whatever. 
On the other side, there is the excess of a dull and 
unpainstaking acquiescence, satisfied with accepting 
in an unquestioning spirit, and as if they were lit- 
erally facts, all particulars of a wonderful history, 
because in some sense it is from God. Between these 
extremes lie infinite degrees of rational and irrational 
interpretation. 

It will be observed, that the ideal method is appli- 
cable m two ways ; both to giving account of the 
origin of parts of Scripture, and also in explanation 
of Scripture. It is thus either critical or exegetical. 
An example of the critical ideology carried to excess 
is that of Strauss, which resolves into an ideal the 
whole of the historical and doctrinal person of Jesus. 
So, again, much of the allegorizing of Philo and Origen 
is an exegetical ideology, exaggerated and wild. But 
it by no means follows, because Strauss has substi- 
tuted a mere shadow for the Jesus of the evangelists, 
and has frequently descended to a minute captiousness 
in details, that there are not traits in the scriptural 
person of Jesus which are better explained by refer- 
ring them to an ideal than an historical origin : and, 
without falling into fanciful exegetics, there are parts 
of Scripture more usefully interpreted ideologically 
than in any other manner; as, for instance, the his- 
tory of the temptation of Jesus by Satan, and accounts 
of demoniacal possessions. And liberty must be left 
to all as to the extent in which they apply the princi- 
ple ; for there is no authority, through the expressed 
determination 'of the Church nor of any other kind, 
which can define the limits within which it may be 
reasonably exercised. 

10* o 



226 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

Thus some may consider the descent of all mankind 
from Adam and Eve as an undoubted historical fact ; 
others may rather perceive in that relation a form of 
narrative, into which, in early ages, tradition woulii 
easily throw itself spontaneously. Each race natural- 
ly, necessarily when races are isolated, supposes itself 
to be sprung from a single pair, and to be the first, or 
the only one, of races. Among a particular people, 
this historical representation became the concrete 
expression of a great moral truth, — of the brother- 
hood of all human beings, of their community, as in 
other things, so also in suffering and in frailty, in phys- 
ical pains, and in moral " corruption." And the force, 
grandeur, and reality of these ideas are not a whit 
impaired in the abstract, nor indeed the truth of the 
concrete history as their representation, even though 
mankind should have been placed upon tlie earth in 
many pairs at once, or in distinct centres of creation. 
For the brotherhood of men really depends, not upon 
the material fact of their fleshly descent from a sin- 
gle stock, but vipon their constitution, as possessed in 
common, of the same faculties and affections, fitting 
them for mutual relation and association ; so that the 
value of the history, if it were a history strictly so 
called, would lie in its emblematic force and applica- 
tion. And many narratives of marvels and catastro- 
phes in the Old Testament are referred to in the New 
as emblems, without either denying or asserting their 
literal truth ; such as the destruction of Sodom and 
Gomorrah by fire from heaven, and the Noachian 
deluge. And especially if we bear in mind the exist- 
ence of such a school as that which produced Philo, 
or even the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we 
must think it would be wrong to lay down, that, when- 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 227 

ever the Xew Testament writers refer to Old Testa- 
ment histories, they imply of necessity that the historic 
truth was the first to them. For their purposes, it was 
often wholly in the background, and the history valu- 
able only in its spiritual application. The same may 
take place with ourselves, and history and tradition be 
employed emblematically, without, on that account, 
being regarded as untrue. We do not apply the term 
" untrue " to parable, fable, or proverb, although their 
words correspond with ideas, not with material facts : 
as little should we do so when narratives have been 
the spontaneous product of true ideas, and are capa- 
ble of reproducing them. 

The ideologian is evidently in possession of a prin- 
ciple which will enable him to stand in charitable 
relation to persons of very different opinions from his 
own, and of very different opinions mutually ; and, if 
he has perceived to how great extent the history 
of the origin itself of Christianity rests ultimately 
upon probable evidence, his principle will relieve him 
from many difficulties which might otherwise be very 
disturbing : for relations which may repose on doubt- 
ful grounds as matter of history, and, as history, be 
incapable of being ascertained or verified, may yet 
be equally suggestive of true ideas with facts abso- 
lutely certain. The spiritual significance is the same 
of the transfiguration, of opening blind eyes, of caus- 
ing the tongue of the stammerer to speak plainly, of 
feeding multitudes with bread in the wilderness, of 
cleansing leprosy, whatever links may be deficient 
in the traditional record of particular events. Or let 
us suppose one to be uncertain whether our Lord 
were born of the house and lineage of David or of 
the tribe of Levi, and even to be driven to conclude 



228 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

that the genealogies of him have httle historic value : 
nevertheless, in idea, Jesus is both Son of David and 
Son of Aaron ; both Prince of Peace and High Priest 
of our profession ; as he is, under another idea, though 
not literally, " without father and without mother." 
And he is none the less Son of David, Priest Aaron- 
ical, or Royal Priest Melchizedecan, in idea and spir- 
itually, even if it be unproved whether he were any 
of them in historic fact. In like manlier, it need 
not trouble us, if, in consistency, we should have to 
suppose both an ideal origin and to apply an ideal 
meaning to the birth in the city of David, and to other 
circumstances of the infancy. So, again, the incar- 
nification of the divine Immanuel remains, although 
the angelic appearances which herald it in the narra- 
tives of the evangelists may be of ideal origin, accord- 
ing to the conceptions of former days. The ideologian 
may sometimes be thought sceptical, and be sceptical 
or doubtful as to the historical value of related facts : 
but the historical value is not always to him the most 
important, — frequently it is quite secondary ; and, 
consequently, discrepancies in narratives, scientific dif- 
ficulties, defects in evidence, do not disturb him as 
they do the literalist. 

Moreover, the same principle is capable of applica- 
tion to some of those inferences which have been the 
source, according to different theologies, of much con- 
troversial acrimony and of wide ecclesiastical separa- 
tions ; such as those which have been drawn from the 
institution of the sacraments. Some, for instance, can- 
not conceive a presence of Jesus Christ in his institu- 
tion of the Lord's Supper, unless it be a corporeal one ; 
nor a spiritual influence upon the moral nature of man 
to be connected with baptism, unless it be be super- 



THE NATIONAL CHUECH. 229 

natural, quasi-mechanical, effecting a psychical change 
then and there. But within these concrete concep- 
tions there lie hid the truer ideas of the virtual pres- 
ence of the Lord Jesus everywhere that he is preached, 
remembered, and represented ; and of the continual 
force of his spirit in his words, and especially in the 
ordinance which indicates the separation of the Chris- 
tian from the world. 

The same may be said of the concrete conceptions 
of an hierarchy described by its material form and 
descent ; also of millenarian expectations of a personal 
reign of the samts with Jesus upon earth, and of the 
many embodiments in which from age to age has re- 
appeared the vision of a New Jerusalem shining with 
mundane glory here below. These gross conceptions, 
as they seem to some, may be necessary to others, as 
approximations to true ideas. So, looking for redemp- 
tion in Israel was a looking for a very different re- 
demption, with most of the Jewish people, from that 
which Jesus really came to operate ; yet it was the 
only expectation which they could form, and was the 
shadow to them of a great reality. 

" Lo, the poor Indian, whose untutored mind 
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind." 

Even to the Hebrew Psalmist, he comes flying upon 
the wings of the wind ; and only to the higher prophet 
is he not in the wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in 
the fire, but in " the still small voice." Not the same 
thoughts — very far from the same thoughts — pass 
through the minds of the more and the less instructed 
on contemplating the same face of the natural world. 
In like manner are the thoughts of men various, in 
form at least, if not in substance, when they read the 
same Scripture histories and use the same Scripture 



230 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

phrases. Histories to some become parables to others, 
and facts to those are emblems to these. The " rock " 
and the " cloud " and the " sea " convey to the Chris- 
tian admonitions of spiritual verities ; and so do the 
ordinances of the Church, and various parts of its 
forms of worship. 

Jesus Christ has not revealed his religion as a the- 
ology of the intellect, nor as an historical faith ; and it 
is a stifling of the true Christian life, both in the indi- 
vidual and in the Cliurch, to require of many men a 
unanimity in speculative doctrine, which is unattain- 
able, and a uniformity of historical belief, which can 
never exist. The true Cliristian life is the conscious- 
ness of bearing a part in a great moral order, of which 
the highest agency upon earth has been committed to 
the Church. Let us not oppress this work, nor com- 
plicate the difficulties with which it is surrounded : 
" not making the heart of the righteous sad, whom the 
Lord hath not made sad ; nor strengthening the hands 
of the wicked by promising him life." 

There is enough, indeed, to sadden us in the doubt- 
ful warfare which the good wages with the evil, both 
within us and without us. How few, under the most 
favorable conditions, learn to bring themselves face to 
face with the great moral law, which is the manifesta- 
tion of the will of God ! The greater part can only 
detect the evil when it comes forth from them, nearly 
as when any other might observe it. We cannot, in 
the matter of those who are brought under the high- 
est influences of the Christian Church, any more than 
in the case of mankind viewed in their ordinary re- 
lations, give any account of the apparently useless 
expenditure of power, of the apparent overbearing 
generally of the higher law by the lower, of the 



THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 231 

apparent poverty of result from the operation of a 
wonderful machinery, of the seeming waste of myri- 
ads of germs for the sake of a few mature growths. 
" Many are called, but few chosen ; " and under the 
privileges of the Christian Church, as in other mys- 



teries, — 

TToXXoi [jLev vap6rjKo(p6poLj ^aKxoi be ye iravpoi. 

Calvinism has a keen perception of this truth ; and 
we shrink from Calvinism and Augustinianism, not be- 
cause of their perceiving how few, even under Chris- 
tian privileges, attain to the highest adoption of sons, 
but because of the inferences with which they clog 
that truth, — the inferences which they draw respect- 
ing the rest, whom they comprehend in one mass of 
perdition. 

The Christian Church can only tend on those who 
are committed to its care, to the verge of that abyss 
which parts this world from the world unseen. Some 
few of those fostered by her are now ripe for entering 
on a higher career : the many are but rudimentary 
spirits, germinal souls. What shall become of them ? 
If we look abroad in the world, and regard the neu 
tral character of the multitude, we are at a loss to 
apply to them either the promises or the denuncia- 
tions of revelation. So the wise Heathens could 
anticipate a reunion with the great and good of all 
ages ; they could represent to themselves, at least in 
a figurative manner, the punishment and the purgatory 
of the wicked : but they would not expect the reap- 
pearance in another world, for any purpose, of a Ther- 
sites or an Hyperboles ; social and poetical justice had 
been sufficiently done upon them. Yet there are such 
as these, and no better than these, under the Christian 



232 THE NATIONAL CHURCH. 

name, — babblers, busybodies, livers to get gain, and 
mere eaters and drinkers. The Roman Church has 
imagined a limbus infantium : we must rather enter- 
tain a hope that there shall be found, after the great 
adjudication, receptacles suitable for those who shall 
be infants, not as to years of terrestrial life, but as to 
spiritual development ; nurseries, as it were, and seed- 
grounds, where the undeveloped may grow up under 
new conditions, the stunted may become strong, and 
the perverted be restored. And when the Christian 
Church, in all its branches, shall have fulfilled its sub- 
lunary office, and its Founder shall have surrendered 
his kingdom to the Great Father, all, both small and 
great, shall find a refuge in the bosom of the Uni- 
versal Parent, to repose, or be quickened into higher 
life, in the ages to come, according to his will. 



THE MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

By C. W. GOODWIN, M. A. 

ON the revival of science in the sixteenth century, 
some of the earhest conclusions at which phi- 
losophers arrived were found to be at variance with 
popular and long-established belief. The Ptolemaic 
system of astronomy, which had then full possession 
of the minds of men, contemplated the whole visible 
universe from the earth as the immovable centre of 
things. Copernicus changed the point of view ; and, 
placing the beholder in the sun, at once reduced the 
earth to an inconspicuous globule, a merely subordinate 
member of a family of planets, which the terrestrials 
had until then fondly imagined to be but pendants 
and ornaments of their own habitation. The Church 
naturally took a lively interest in the disputes which 
arose between the philosophers of the new school and 
those who adhered to the old doctrines ; inasmuch as 
the Hebrew records, the basis of religious faith mani- 
festly countenanced the opinion of the earth's immo- 
bility, and certain other views of the universe very 
incompatible with those propounded by Copernicus. 
Hence arose the official proceedings against Galileo, 
in consequence of which he submitted to sign his 
celebrated recantation, acknowledging that " the prop- 
osition that the sun is the centre of the world, and 



234 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

immovable from its place, is absurd, pliilosophically 
false, and formally heretical, because in it is expressly 
contrary to the Scripture ; " and that " the proposition 
that the earth is not the centre of the world , nor im- 
movable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal 
motion, is absurd, philosophically false, and at least 
erroneous in faith." 

The Romish Church, it is presumed, adheres to the 
old views to the present day. Protestant instincts, 
however, in the seventeenth century, were strongly 
in sympathy with the augmentation of science ; and 
consequently Reformed churches more easily allowed 
themselves to be helped over the difficulty, which, 
according to the views of inspiration then held, and 
which have survived to the present day, was, in real- 
ity, quite as formidable for them as for those of the 
old faith. The solution of the difficulty offered by 
Galileo and others was, that the object of a revelation, 
or divine unveiling of mysteries, must be to teach 
man things which he is unable, and must ever remain 
unable, to find out for himself ; but not physical 
truths, for the discovery of which he has faculties 
specially provided by his Creator. Hence it was not 
unreasonable that, in regard to matters of fact mere- 
ly, the Sacred Writings should use the common lan- 
guage and assume the common belief of mankind, 
without purporting to correct errors upon points 
morally indifferent. So in regard to such a text 
as, " The world is established, it cannot be moved," 
though it might imply the sacred penman's ignorance 
of the fact that the earth does move, yet it does not 
put forth this opinion as an indispensable point of 
faith. And this remark is applicable to a number of 
texts which present a similar difficulty. 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 235 

It might be thought to have been less easy to 
reconcile in men's minds the Copernican view of the 
universe with the very plain and direct averments 
contained in the opening chapter of Genesis. It can 
scarcely be said that this chapter is not intended in 
part to teach and convey at least some physical truth ; 
and, taking its words in their plain sense, it manifestly 
gives a view of the universe adverse to that of mod- 
ern science. It represents the sky as a watery vault, 
m which the sun, moon, and stars are set. But the 
discordance of this description with facts does not 
appear to have been so palpable to the minds of the 
seventeenth century as it is to us. The mobility of 
the earth was a proposition startling not only to faith, 
but to the senses. The difficulty involved in this be- 
lief having been successfully got over, other discrepan- 
cies dwindled in importance. The brilliant progress of 
astronomical science subdued the minds of men. The 
controversy between faith and knowledge gradually 
fell to slumber. The story of Galileo and the Inqui- 
sition became a school commonplace. The doctrine 
of the earth's mobility found its way into children's 
catechisms, and the limited views of the nature of the 
universe indicated in the Old Testament ceased to be 
felt as religious difficulties. 

It would have been well if theologians had made 
up their minds to accept frankly the principle, that 
those things for the discovery of which man has 
faculties specially provided are not fit objects of a 
divine revelation. Had this been unhesitatingly done, 
either the definition and idea of divine revelation 
must have been modified, and the possibility of an 
admixture of error have been allowed, or such parts 
of the Hebrew writings as were found to be repugnant 



236 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

to fact must have been pronounced to form no part of 
revelation. The first course is that which theologians 
have most generally adopted, but with such limita- 
tions, cautels, and equivocations, as to be of little use 
in satisfying those who would know how ancf what 
God really has taught mankind, and whether any- 
thing beyond that which man is able and obviously 
intended to arrive at by the use of his natural facul- 
ties. 

The difficulties and disputes which attended the 
first revival of science have recurred in the present 
century in consequence of the growth of geology. It 
is, in truth, only the old question over again, — pre- 
cisely the same point of theology which is involved, — 
although the difficulties which present themselves are 
fresh. The school-books of the present day, while 
they teach the child that the earth moves, yet assure 
him that it is a little less than six thousand years old, 
and that it was made in six days. On the other hand, 
geologists of all religious creeds are agreed that the 
earth has existed for an immense series of years, — to 
be counted by millions rather than by thousands ; and 
that indubitably more than six days elapsed from its 
first creation to the appearance of man upon its sur- 
face. By this broad discrepancy between old and new 
doctrine is the modern mind startled, as were the men 
of the sixteenth century when told that the earth 
moved. 

When this new cause of controversy first arose, 
some writers, more hasty than discreet, attacked the 
conclusions of geologists, and declared them scientifi- 
cally false. This phase may now be considered past ; 
and, although school-books probably continue to teach 
much as they did, no well-instructed person now 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 237 

doubts the great antiquity of the earth any more than 
its motion. This being so, modern theologians, for- 
saking the maxim of GaUleo, or only using it vaguely 
as an occasional make-weight, have directed their at- 
tention to the possibility of reconciling the Mosaic nar- 
rative with those geological facts which are admitted 
to be beyond dispute. Several modes of doing this 
have been proposed, which have been deemed more or 
less satisfactory. In a text-book of theological instruc- 
tion widely us^d,* we find it stated in broad terms, 
" Geological investigations, it is now known, all prove 
the perfect harmony between Scripture and geology, 
in reference to the history of creation." 

In truth, however, if we refer to the plans of concil- 
iation proposed, we find them at variance with each 
other, and mutually destructive. The conciliators are 
not agreed among themselves, and each holds the 
views of the other to be untenable and unsafe. The 
ground is perpetually being shifted, as the advance of 
geological science may require. The plain meaning 
of the Hebrew record is unscrupulously tampered 
with ; and, in general, the pith of the whole process 
lies in divesting the text of all meaning whatever. 
We are told, that. Scripture not being designed to 
teach us natural philosophy, it is in vain to attempt 
to make out a cosmogony from its statements. If the 
first chapter of Genesis convey to us no information 
concerning the origin of the world, its statements 
cannot, indeed, be contradicted by modern discovery. 
But it is absurd to call this harmony. Statements 
such as that above quoted are, we conceive, little cal- 
culated to be serviceable to the interests of theology, 

* Home's Introduction to the Holy Scriptures, 1856, tenth edition. 



238 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

still less to religion and morality. Believing, as we 
do, that, if the value of the Bible, as a book of relig- 
ious instruction is to be maintained, it must be, not by 
striving to prove it scientifically exact at the expense 
of every sound principle of interpretation, and in de- 
fiance of common sense, but by the frank recognition 
of the erroneous views of nature which it contains, we 
have put pen to paper to analyze some of the popular 
conciliation theories. The inquiry cannot be deemed 
a superfluous one, nor one which, in the interests of 
theology, had better be let alone. Physical science 
goes on unconcernedly pursuing its own paths. The- 
ology, the science whose object is the dealing of God 
with man as a moral being, maintains but a shivering 
existence, shouldered and jostled by the sturdy growths 
of modern thought, and bemoaning itself for the hos- 
tility which it encounters. Why should this be, unless 
because theologians persist in clinging to theories of 
God's procedure towards man, which have long been 
seen to be untenable ? If, relinquishing theories, they 
would be content to inquire from the history of man 
what this procedure has actually been, the so-called 
difficulties of theology would, for the most part, van- 
ish of themselves. 

The account which astronomy gives of the relations 
of our earth to the rest of the universe, and that 
which geology gives of its internal structure and the 
development of its surface, are sufficiently familiar to 
most readers. But it will be necessary for our pur- 
pose to go over the oft-trodden ground, which must 
be done with rapid steps. Nor let the reader object 
to be reminded of some of the most elementary facts 
of his knowledge. The human race has been ages in 
arriving at conclusions now familiar to every child. 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 239 

This earth, apparently so still and steadfast, lying 
in majestic repose beneath the ethereal vault, is a 
globular body, of comparatively insignificant size, 
whirling fast through space round the sun as the 
centre of its orbit, and completing its revolution in 
the course of one year ; while, at the same time, it 
revolves daily once about its own axis, thus producing 
the changes of day and night. The sun, which seems 
to leap up each morning from the east, and, traversing 
the skyey bridge, slides down into the west, is rela- 
tively, to our earth, motionless. In size and weight, it 
inconceivably surpasses it. The moon, which occupies 
a position in the visible heavens only second to the 
sun, and far beyond that of every other celestial body 
in conspicuousness, is but a subordinate globe, much 
smaller than our own, and revolving round the earth 
as its centre, while it accompanies it in yearly revo- 
lutions about the sun. Of itself it has no lustre, and 
is visible to us only by the reflected sunlight. Those 
beautiful stars, which are perpetually changing their 
position in the heavens, and shine with a soft and 
moon-like light, are bodies, some much larger, some 
less, than our earth, and, like it, revolve round the 
sun, by the reflection of whose rays we see them. 
The telescope has revealed to us the fact, that several 
of these are attended by moons of their own ; and 
that, besides those which the unassisted eye can see, 
there are others belonging to the same family cours- 
ing round the sun. As for the glittering dust which 
emblazons the nocturnal sky, there is reason to believe 
that each spark is a self-luminous body, perhaps of 
similar material to our sun ; and that the very nearest 
of the whole tribe is at an incalculable distance from 
us, — the very least of them of enormous size com- 



240 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

pared with our own humble globe. Thus has modern 
science reversed nearly all the prima facie views to 
which our senses lead us as to the constitution of the 
universe ; but so thoroughly are the above statements 
wrought into the culture of the present day, that we 
are apt to forget that mankind once saw these things 
very differently, and that but a few centuries have 
elapsed since such views were startling novelties. 

Our earth, then, is but one of the lesser pendants 
of a body which is itself only an inconsiderable unit 
in the vast creation. And now, if we witlidraw our 
thoughts from the immensities of space, and look into 
the construction of man's obscure home, the first ques- 
tion is, whether it has ever been in any other con- 
dition than that in which we now see it ; and, if so, 
what are the stages through which it has passed ? 
and what was its first traceable state ? Here geology 
steps in, and successfully carries back the history of 
the earth's crust to a very remote period, until it 
arrives at a region of uncertainty, where philosophy 
is reduced to mere guesses and possibilities, and pro- 
nounces nothing definite. To this region belong tlie 
speculations which have been ventured vipon as to 
the original concretion of the earth and planets out of 
nebular matter, of which the sun may have been the 
nucleus. But the first clear view which we obtain of 
the early condition of the earth presents to us a ball 
of matter, fluid with intense heat, spinning on its 
own axis, and revolving round the sun. How long it 
may have continued in this state is beyond calcula- 
tion or surmise. It can only be believed that a pro- 
longed period, beginning and ending we know not 
when, elapsed before the surface became cooled and 
hardened, and capable of sustaining organized exist- 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 241 

ences. The water, wliich now inwraps a large portion 
of the face of the globe, must for ages have existed 
only in tlie shape of steam, floating above and envelop- 
ing the planet in one thick curtain of mist. When the 
cooling of the surface allowed it to condense and de- 
scend, then commenced the process by which the low- 
est stratified rocks were formed, and gradually spread 
out in vast layers. Eains and rivers now acted upon 
the scoriaceous integument, grinding it to sand, and 
carrying it down to the depths and cavities. Whether 
organized beings co-existed with this state of things 
we know not, as the early rocks have been acted 
upon by interior heat to an extent which must have 
destroyed all traces of animal and vegetable life, if 
any such ever existed. This period has been named 
by geologists the Azoic, or that in which life was not. 
Its duration no once presumes to define. 

It is in the system of beds which overlies these 
primitive formations that the first records of organ- 
isms present themselves. In the so-called Silurian 
system, we have a vast assemblage of strata of various 
kinds, together many thousands of feet thick, and 
abounding in remains of animal life. These strata 
were deposited at the bottom of the sea, and the 
remains are exclusively marine. The creatures whose 
exuviae have been preserved belong to those classes 
which are placed by naturalists the lowest with re- 
spect to organization, — the mollusca, articulata, and 
radiata. Analagous beings exist at the present day, 
but not their lineal descendants, unless time can effect 
transmutation of species ; an hypothesis not generally 
accepted by naturalists. In the same strata with 
these inhabitants of the early seas are found remains 
of fucoid or seaweed-like plants (the lowest of the 
11 p 



242 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

vegetable tribe), which may have been the first of this 
kind of existences introduced into the world ; but, as 
little has yet been discovered to throw light upon the 
state of the dry land and its productions at this re- 
mote period, nothing can be asserted positively on the 
subject.* 

In the upper strata of the Silurian system is found 
the commencement of the race of fishes (the lowest 
creatures of the vertebrate type), and in the succeed- 
ing beds they become abundant. These monsters 
clothed in mail, who must have been the terror of 
the seas they inhabited, have left their indestructible 
coats behind them as evidences of their existence. 

Next come the carboniferous strata, containing the 
remains of a gigantic and luxuriant vegetation ; and 
here reptiles and insects begin to make their appear- 
ance. At this point, geologists make a kind of arti- 
ficial break, and, for the sake of distinction, denominate 
the whole of the foregoing period of animated exist- 
ences the Palaeozoic, or that of antique life. 

In the next great geological section, the so-called 
Secondary period, in which are comprised tlie oolitic 
and cretaceous systems, the predominant creatures 
are different from those which figured conspicuously 
in the preceding. The land was inhabited by gigan- 
tic animals, half-toad, half-lizard, who hopped about, 
leaving often their footprints, like those of a clumsy 
human hand, upon the sandy shores of the seas they 
frequented. The waters now abounded with monsters, 
half- fish, half- crocodile (the well-known saurians), 
whose bones have been collected in abundance. Even 
the air had its tenantry from the same family type ; 

* It has been stated timt a coal-bed, containing remains of land plants, 
underlying strata of the lower Silurian class, has been found in Portugal. 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 243 

for the pterodactyls were creatures half-lizard, half- 
vampire, provided with membranous appendages which 
must have enabled them to fly. In an early stage 
of this period, traces of birds appear ; and, somewhat 
later, those of mammals, but of the lowest class be- 
longing to that division ; namely, the marsupial or 
pouch-bearing animals, in which naturalists see affini- 
ties to the oviparous tribes. The vegetation of this 
period seems to have consisted principally of the lower 
classes of plants, according to the scale of organiza- 
tion accepted by botanists ; but it was luxuriant and 
gigantic. 

Lastly comes the Tertiary period, in which mam- 
malia of the highest forms enter upon the scene, while 
the composite growths of the Secondary period in 
great part disappear, and the types of creatures ap- 
proach more nearly to those which now exist. During 
long ages this state of things continued, while the 
earth was the abode principally of mastodons, ele- 
phants, rhinoceroses, and their thick-hided congeners, 
many of them of colossal proportions, and of species 
which have now passed away. The remains of these 
creatures have been found in the frozen rivers of the 
North, and they appear to have roamed over regions of 
the globe where their more delicate representatives of 
the present day would be unable to live. During this 
era, the ox, horse, and deer, and perhaps other ani- 
mals, destined to be serviceable to man, became inhabi- 
tants of the earth. Lastly, the advent of man may be 
considered as inaugurating a new and distinct epoch, 
■ — that in which we now are, and during the whole of 
which the physical conditions of existence cannot have 
been very materially different from what they are 
now. Thus the reduction of the earth into the state 



244 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

in which we now behold it has been the slowly con- 
tinued work of ages. The races of organic beings 
which have populated its surface have from time to 
time passed away and been supplanted by others, in- 
troduced we know not certainly by what means, but 
evidently according to a fixed method and order, and 
with a gradually increasing complexity and fineness of 
organization, until we come to man as the crowning 
point of all. Geologically speaking, the history of 
his first appearance is obscure ; nor does archaeology 
do much to clear this obscurity. Science has, how- 
ever, made some efforts towards tracing man to his 
cradle ; and by patient observation, and collection of 
facts, much more may perhaps be done in this direc- 
tion. As for history and tradition they afford little 
upon which anything can be built. The human race, 
like each individual man, has forgotten its own birth ; 
and the void of its early years has been filled up by 
imagination, and not from genuine recollection. Thus 
mucli is clear, that man's existence on earth is brief, 
compared with the ages during which unreasoning 
creatures were the sole possessors of the globe. 

We pass to the account of the creation contained in 
the Hebrew record. And it must be observed, that, 
in reality, two distinct accounts are given us in the 
book of Genesis, — one being comprised in the first 
chapter and the first three verses of the second ; the 
other commencing at the fourth verse of the second 
chapter, and continuing till the end. This is so philo- 
logically certain, that it were useless to ignore it. 
But even those, who may be inclined to contest the 
fact that we have here the productions of two different 
writers, will admit that the account beginning at the 
first verse of the first chapter, and ending at the third 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 245 

verse of the second, is a complete whole in itself. 
And to this narrative, in order not to complicate the 
subject ■unnecessarilj, we intend to confine ourselves. 
It will be sufficient for our purpose to inquire, whether 
this accoimt can be shown to be in accordance with 
our astronomical and geological knowledge ; and, for 
the right understanding of it, the whole must be set 
out, so that the various parts may be taken in connec- 
tion with one another. 

We are told that " in the beginning God created 
the heaven and the earth." It has been matter of 
discussion amongst theologians, whether the word 
" created " (Heb. bar a) here means simply shaped or 
formed, or shaped or formed out of nothing. From 
the use of the verb bara in other passages, it appears 
that it does not necessarily mean to make out of 
nothing ; * but it certainly might impliedly mean this 
in a case so peculiar as the present. The phrase, " the 
heaven and the earth," is evidently used to signify 
the universe of things ; inasmuch as the heaven in its 
proper signification has no existence until the second 
day. It is asserted then that God shaped the whole 
material universe, whether out of nothing, or out of 
pre-existing matter. But which sense the writer really 
intended is not material for our present purpose to in- 
quire, since neither astronomical nor geological science 
affects to state anything concerning the first origin of 
matter. 

In the second verse, the earliest state of things is 

* This appears at once from ver. 21, where it is said that God created 
(barn) the great whales; and from ver. 26 and 27, in the first of which we 
read, " God said. Let ns make {hasah) inan in our image; " and in the lat- 
ter, " So God created (bara) man in his image." In neither of these cases 
can it be supposed to be implied that the whales or man were made out of 
nothing. In the second narrative, another word is used for the creation of 
man, — itzer, "to mould; " and his formation out of the dust is circumstan- 
tially described. 



246 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

described ; according to the received translation, " Tlie 
earth was without form, and void." The Prophet 
Jeremiah* uses the same expression to describe the 
desolation of the earth's surface occasioned by God's 
wrath ; and perhaps the words " empty and waste " 
would convey to us at present something more nearly 
approaching the meaning of tohu va-bohu than those 
which the translators have used. 

The earth itself is supposed to be submerged under 
the waters of the deep, over which the breath of God 
— the air, or wind — flutters while all is involved in 
darkness. The first special creative command is that 
which bids tlie light appear ; whereupon dayliglit 
breaks over the two primeval elements of earth and 
water, — the one lying still enveloped by the other : 
and the space of time occupied by the original dark- 
ness and the light which succeeded is described as the 
first day. Thus light and the measurement of time 
are represented as existing before the manifestation of 
the sun ; and this idea, although repugnant to our 
modern knowledge, has not in former times appeared 
absurd. Thus we find Ambrose (" Hexaemeron," 
lib. 4, cap. 3) remarking, " We must recollect that 
the light of day is one thing ; the light of the sun, 
moon, and stars, another, — the sun by his rays ap- 
pearing to add lustre to the daylight. For before 
sunrise the day dawns, but is not in full refulgence ; 
for the midday sun adds still further to its splendor." 
We quote this passage to show how a mind unsophis- 
ticated by astronomical knowledge understood the 
Mosaic statement ; and we may boldly affirm, that 
those for whom it was first penned could have taken 

Chap. iv. 33. 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 247 

it in no other sense than that light existed before and 
independently of the sun : nor do we misrepresent it 
when we affirm this to be its natural and primary 
meaning. How far we are entitled to give to the 
writer's words an enigmatical and secondary meaning, 
as contended by those who attempt to conciliate them 
with our present knowledge, must be considered fur- 
ther on. 

The work of the second day of creation is to erect 
the vault of heaven (Heb. rakia ; Gr. crrepecofia ; Lat. 
fir7)iamentwii) , which is represented as supporting an 
ocean of water above it. The waters are said to be 
divided ; so that some are below, some above, the 
vault. That the Hebrews understood the sky, firma- 
ment, or heaven, to be a permanent solid vault, as it 
appears to the ordinary observer, is evident enough 
from various expressions made use of concerning it. 
It is said to have pillars (Job xxvi. 11), foundations 
(2 Sam. xxii. 8), doors (Ps. Ixxviii. 23), and windows 
(Gen. vii. 11). No quibbling about the derivation of 
the word rakia^ which is literally something beaten 
out,* can affect the explicit description of the Mosaic 
writer, contained in the words, " the waters that are 
above the firmament," or avail to show that he was 
aware that the sky is but transparent space. 

On the third day at the command of God, the 
waters which have hitherto concealed the earth are 
gathered together in one place, — the sea ; and the 
dry land emerges. Upon the same day, the earth 
brings forth grass, herb yielding seed, and fruit-trees, 
the destined food of the animals and of man (ver. 29). 

* The root is generally applied to express the hammering or beating out 
of metal plates ; hence something beaten or spread out. It has been pre- 
tended that the word rakia may be translated " expanse," so as merely to 
mean empty space. The context sufficiently rebuts this. 



248 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

Nothing is said of herbs and trees which are not 
serviceable to this purpose ; and perhaps it may be 
contended, since there is no vegetable production 
which may not possibly be useful to man, or which is 
not preyed upon by some animal, that in this descrip- 
tion the whole terrestrial flora is implied. We wish, 
however, to call the attention of the reader to the 
fact, that trees and plants destined for food are those 
which are particularly singled out here as the earliest 
productions of the earth, as we shall have occasion to 
refer to this again presently. 

On the fourth day, the two great lights — the sun 
and moon — are made (Heb. hasali)^ and set in the fir- 
mament of heaven to give light to the earth, but more 
particularly to serve as the means of measuring time, 
and of marking out years, days, and seasons. This is 
the most prominent office assigned to them (ver. 14 - 
18). The formation of the stars is mentioned in the 
most cursory manner. It is not said out of what ma- 
terials all these bodies were made ; and whether the 
writer regarded them as already existing and only 
waiting to have a proper place assigned them, may be 
open to question. At any rate, their allotted recep- 
tacle — the firmament — was not made until the sec- 
ond day, nor were they set in it until the fourth ; 
vegetation, be it observed, having already commenced 
on the third, and therefore independently of the 
warming influence of the sun. 

On the fifth day, the waters are called into pro- 
ductive activity, and bring forth fishes and marine 
animals, as also the birds of the air.* It is also said 
that God created or formed (para) great whales, and 

* In the second narrative of creation, in which no distinction of days is 
made, the bii'ds are said to have been formed out of the ground. Gen. ii. 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 249 

other creatures of the water and air. On the sixth 
day, the earth brings forth living creatures, cattle, and 
reptiles, and also " the beast of the field ; " that is, the 
wild beasts. And here also it is added that God made 
(Jiasali) these creatures after their several kinds. The 
formation of man is distinguished by a variation of 
the creative fiat, " Let us make man in our image, after 
our likeness." Accordingly, man is made and formed 
(hara) in the image and likeness of God, — a phrase 
which has been explamed away to mean merely " per- 
fect, sinless ; " although the Pentateuch abounds in 
passages showing that the Hebrews contemplated the 
Divine Being in the visible form of a man.* Modern 
spiritualism has so entirely banished this idea, that 
probably many may not without an effort be able to 
accept the plain language of the Hebrew writer in its 
obvious sense in the twenty-sixth verse of the first 
chapter of Genesis ; though they will have no diffi- 
culty in doing so in the third verse of the fifth chap- 
ter, where the same words, " image " and " likeness," 
are used. Man is said to have been created male and 
female ; and the narrative contains nothing to show 
that a single pair only is intended.f He is com- 
manded to increase and multiply, and to assume 
dominion over all the other tribes of beings. The 
whole of the works of creation being complete, God 
gives to man, beast, fowl, and creeping thing, the 
vegetable productions of the earth as their appointed 
food. And when we compare the verses (Gen. i. 29, 
30) with Gen. ix. 3, in which, after the flood, animals 



* See particularly the narrative in Gen. xviii. 

t It is in the second narrative of creation that the formation of a single 
man out of the dust of the earth is described, and the omission to create a 
female at the same time is stated to have been repaired by the subsequent 
formation of one from the side of the man. 

11* 



250 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

are given to man for food in addition to the green 
herb^.jt is difficult not to come to the conchision, 
that, in the earliest view taken of creation, men and 
animals were supposed to have been, in their original 
condition, not carnivorous. It is needless to say that 
this has been for the most part the construction put 
upon the words of the Mosaic writer, until a clear 
perception of the creative design which destined the 
tiger and lion for flesh-eaters, and latterly the geologi- 
cal proof of flesh-eating monsters having existed among 
the pre- Adamite inhabitants of the globe, rendered it 
necessary to ignore this meaning. 

The first, second, and third verses of the second 
chapter of Genesis, which have been most absurdly 
divided from their context, conclude the narrative.* 
On the seventh day, God rests from his work, and 
blesses the day of rest, a fact which is referred to in 
the commandment given from Sinai, as the ground 
of the observance of sabbatic rest imposed upon the 
Hebrews. 

Remarkable as this narrative is for simple grand- 
eur, it has nothing in it which can be properly called 
poetical. It bears on its face no trace of mystical or 
symbolical meaning. Things are called by their right 
names with a certain scientific exactness widely differ- 
ent from the imaginative cosmogonies of the Greeks, 
in which the powers and phenomena of nature are 
invested with personality, and the passions and quali- 
ties of men are represented as individual existences. 

The circumstances related in the second narrative 
of creation are, indeed, such as to give at least some 

* The common arrangement of the Bible in chapters is of comparatively 
modern origin, and is admitted, on all hands, to have no authority or philo- 
logical worth whatever. In many cases the division is most preposterous, 
and interferes greatly with an intelligent perusal of the text. 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 251 

ground for the supposition that a mystical interpre- 
tation was intended to be given to it. But this is far 
from being the case with the first narrative, in which 
none but a professed mystifier of the school of Philo 
could see anything but a plain statement of facts. 
There can be httle reasonable dispute, then, as to the 
sense in which the Mosaic narrative was taken by 
those who first heard it ; nor is it indeed disputed, that 
for centuries, putting apart the Philonic mysticism 
(which, after all, did not exclude a primary sense), its 
words have been received in their genuine and natural 
meaning. That this meaning is, prima facie^ one 
wholly adverse to the present astronomical and geolog- 
ical views of the universe is evident enough. There 
is not a mere difference through deficiency. It can- 
not be correctly said that the Mosaic writer simply 
leaves out details which modern science supplies, and 
that, therefore, the inconsistency is not a real, but 
only an apparent one. It is manifest that the whole 
account is given from a different point of view from 
that which we now unavoidably take ; that the order 
of things, as we now know them to be, is to a great 
extent reversed, although here and there we may pick 
out some general analogies, and points of resemblance. 
Can we say that the Ptolemaic system of astronomy is 
not at variance with modern science, because it repre- 
sents with a certain degree of correctness some of the 
apparent motions of the heavenly bodies ? 

The task which sundry modern writers have imposed 
upon themselves is to prove that the Mosaic narrative, 
however apparently at variance with our knowledge, 
is essentially and in fact true, although never under- 
stood properly until modern science supplied the neces- 
sary commentary and explanation. 



252 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

Two modes of conciliation have been propounded 
whicli have enjoyed considerable popularity, and to 
these two we shall confine our attention. 

The first is that originally brought into vogue by 
Chalmers, and adopted by the late Dr. Buckland in 
his Bridgewater Treatise, and which is probably still 
received by many as a sufficient solution of all diffi- 
culties. Dr. Buckland's treatment of the case may 
be taken as a fair specimen of the line of argument 
adopted ; and it shall be given in his own words : — 

" The word heginninfj" he says, " as applied by Moses in the 
first verse of the book of Genesis, expresses an undefined period of 
time, which Avas antecedent to the last great change that affected 
the surface of the eartli, and to the creation of its present animal 
and vegetable inhabitants, during which period a long series of 
operations may have been going on ; which, as they are wholly 
unconnected with the history of the human race, are passed over 
in silence by the sacred historian, whose only concern was barely 
to state, that the matter of the universe is not eternal and self- 
existent, but was originally created by the power of the Almighty." 
— " The Mosaic narrative commences with a declaration, that ' in 
the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' These few 
first words of Genesis may be fairly appealed to by the geologist 
as containing a brief statement of the creation of the material 
elements, at a time distinctly preceding the operations of the first 
day. It is nowhere affirmed that God created the heaven and the 
earth in the first day, but in the beginning: this beginning may 
have been an epoch at an unmeasured distance, followed by 
periods of undefined duration, during which all the physical opera- 
tions disclosed by geology were going on. 

" The first verse of Genesis, therefore, seems explicitly to assert 
the creation of the universe ; the heaven, including the sidereal 
systems ; and the earth, more especially specifying our own planet, 
as the subsequent scene of the operations of the six days about to 
be described. No information is given as to events which may 
have occurred upon this earth, unconnected with the history of 
man between the creation of its component matter recorded in the 
first verse, and the era at which its history is resumed in the second 
verse ; nor is any limit fixed to the time during which these inter- 
mediate events may have been going on : millions of millions of 
years may have occupied the indefinite interval, between the be- 
ginning in which God created the heaven and the earth, and the 
evening or commencement of the first day of the Mosaic narrative. 

" The second verse may describe the condition of the earth on 
the evening of this first day ; for, in the Jewish mode of computa- 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 253 

tion used by Moses, each day is reckoned from the beginning of 
one evening to the beginning of another evening. This first even- 
ing may be considered as the termination of the indefinite time 
which followed the primeval creation announced in the first verse, 
and as the commencement of the first of the six succeeding days 
in which the earlh was to be filled up, and peopled in a manner fit 
for the reception of mankind. We have, in this second verse, 
a distinct mention of earth and waters, as already existing, and 
involved in darkness : their condition also is described as a state 
of confusion and emptiness {toliu hohu) ; words which are usually 
interpreted by the vague and indefinite Greek term " chaos," and 
which may be geologically considered as designating the wreck 
and ruins of a former world. At this intermediate point of time, 
the preceding undefined geological periods had terminated, a new 
series of events commenced, and the work of the first morning of 
this new creation was the calling forth of light from a temporary 
darkness which had overspread the ruins of the ancient earth." 

With regard to the formation of the sun and moon, 
Dr. Buckland observes, p. 27, — 

" We are not told that the substance of the sun and moon was 
first called into existence on the fourth day. The text may equally 
imply that these bodies were then prepared and appointed to cer- 
tain offices, of high importance to mankind, — ' to give light upon 
the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night ; to be for 
signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years.' The fact of 
their creation had been stated before in the first verse." 

The question of the meanuig of the word bar a, 
" create," has been previously touched upon : it has 
been acknowledged by good critics that it does not of 
itself necessarily imply " to make out of nothing," 
upon the simple ground that it is found used in cases 
where such a meaning would be inapplicable. But 
the difficulty of giving to it the interpretation con- 
tended for by Dr. Buckland, and of uniting with this 
the assumption of a six days' creation, such as that 
described in Genesis, at a comparatively recent period, 
lies in this, that the heaven itself is distinctly said to 
have been formed by the division of the waters on the 
second day. Consequently, during the indefinite ages 
which elapsed from the primal creation of matter 



254 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

until the first Mosaic day of creation, there was no 
sky, no local habitation for the sun, moon, and stars, 
even supposing those bodies to have been included in 
the original material. Dr. Buckland does not touch 
this obvious difficulty, without which his argument, 
that the sun and moon might have been contemplated 
as pre-existing, although they are not stated to have 
been set in the heaven until the fourth day, is of no 
value at all. 

Dr. Buckland appears to assume, that, when it is 
said that the heaven and the earth were created in the 
beginning, it is to be understood that they were cre- 
ated in thoir present form, and state of completeness ; 
the heaven raised above the earth as we see it, or 
seem to see it, now. This is the fallacy of his argu- 
ment. The circumstantial description of the framing 
of the heaven out of the waters proves that the words 
" heaven and earth," in the first verse, must be taken 
either proleptically, as a general expression for the 
universe, the matter of the universe in its crude and 
unformed shape ; or else the word bara must mean 
" formed," not " created ; " the writer intending to 
say, " God formed the heaven and earth in manner 
following ; " in which case, " heaven " is used in its 
distinct and proper sense. But these two senses can- 
not be united in the manner covertly assumed in Dr. 
Buckland's argument. 

Having, however, thus endeavored to make out that 
the Mosaic account does not negative the idea that the 
sun, moon, and stars had " been created at the indefi- 
nitely distant time designated by the word begin- 
ning','^ he is reduced to describe the primeval darkness 
of the first day as " a temporary darkness, produced 
by an accumulation of dense vapors upon the face of 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 255 

the deep." — " An incipient dispersion of these vapors 
may have readmitted hght to the earth, upon the first 
dav, whilst the exciting cause of light was obscured ; 
and the further purification of the atmosphere upon 
the fourth day may have caused the sun and moon 
and stars to reappear in the firmament of heaven, to 
assume their new relations to the newly modified earth 
and to the human race." 

It is needless to discuss the scientific probability of 
this hypothesis ; but the violence done to the grand 
and simple words of the Hebrew writer must strike 
every mind. " And God said let there be light ; and 
there was light. And God saw the light that it was 
good ; and God divided the light from the darkness. 
And God called the light Day, and darkness called he 
Night ; and the evening and the morning were the 
first day." Can any one sensible of ther value of words 
suppose that nothing more is here described, or in- 
tended to be described, than the partial clearing away 
of a fog? Can such a manifestation of light have 
been dignified by the appellation of Day ? Is not this 
reducing the noble description which has been the 
admiration of ages to a pitiful caput mortuum of empty 
verbiage ? 

What were the new relations which the heavenly 
bodies, according to Dr. Buckland's view, assumed to 
the newly modified earth and to the human race ? 
They had, as we well know, marked out seasons, days, 
and years, and had given light for ages before to the 
earth, and to the animals which preceded man as its 
inhabitants, as is shown, Dr. Buckland admits, by the 
eyes of fossil animals, — optical instruments of the 
same construction as those of the animals of our days, 
— and also by the existence of vegetables in the early 



256 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

world ; to the development of which, light must have 
been as essential then as now. 

The hypothesis adopted by Dr. Buekland was first 
promulgated at a time when the gradual and regular 
formation of the earth's strata was not seen or admitted 
so clearly as it is now. Geologists were more disposed 
to believe in great catastrophes and sudden breaks. 
Buckland's theory supposes, that, previous to the ap- 
pearance of the present races of animals and vegeta- 
bles, there was a great gap in the globe's history ; 
that the earth was completely depopulated, as well of 
marine as land animals ; and that the creation of all 
existing plants and animals was coeval with that of 
man. This theory is by no means supported by geo- 
logical phenomena ; and is, we suppose, now rejected 
by all geologists whose authority is valuable. Thus 
writes Hugh Miller in 1857 : — 

" I certainly did once believe, with Chalmers and with Buck- 
land, that the six days were simply natural days of twenty-four 
hours each ; that they had comprised the entire work of the exist- 
ing creation ; and that the latest of the geologic ages was separated 
by a great chaotic gap from our own. My labors at the time, as a 
practical geologist, had been very much restricted to the palaeozoic 
and secondary rocks, more especially to the old red and carbonif- 
erous systems of the one division, and the oolitic system of the 
other ; and the long-extinct organisms which I found in them cer- 
tainly did not conflict with the view of Chalmers. All I found 
necessary at the time to the work of reconciliation was some scheme 
that would permit me to assign to the earth a high antiquity, and 
to regard it as the scene of many succeeding creations. During 
the last nine years, however, I have spent a few weeks every 
autumn in exploring the late formations, and acquainting myself 
with their particular organisms. I have traced them upwards from 
the raised beaches and old coast lines of the human period, to the 
brick clays, Clyde beds, and drift and bowlder deposits, of the Ple- 
istocene era ; and again from them, with the help of museums and 
collections, up through the mammaliferous crag of England to its 
red and coral crags : and the conclusion at which I have been com- 
pelled to arrive is, that, for many long ages ere man was ushered 
into being, not a few of his humbler contemporaries of the fields 
and woods enjoyed life in their present haunts ; and that, for 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 257 

thousands of years anterior to even their appearance, many of the 
existing mollusks lived in our seas. That day during which the 
present creation came into being, and in which God, when he had 
made ' the beast of the earth after his kind, and the cattle after 
their kind,' at length terminated the work by moulding a creature 
in his own image, to whom he gave dominion over them all, was 
not a brief period of a few hours' duration, but extended over, 
mayhap, millenniums of centuries. No blank chaotic gap of death 
and darkness separated the creation to which man belongs from 
that of the old extinct elephant, hippopotamus, and hyena ; for 
familiar animals — such as the red deer, the roe, the fox, the wild- 
cat, and the badger — lived throughout the period which connected 
their time with our own ; and so I have been compelled to hold, 
that the days of creation were not natural but prophetic days, and 
stretched far back into the bygone eternity." * 

Hugh Miller will be admitted by many as a compe- 
tent witness to the iintenability of the theory of Chal- 
mers and Buckland on mere geological grounds. He 
had, indeed, a theory of his own to propose, which we 
shall presently consider ; but we may take his word 
that it was not without the compulsion of what he 
considered irresistible evidence that he relinquished 
a ^dew which would have saved him infinite time and 
labor, could he have adhered to it. 

But whether contemplated from a geological point 
of view, or whether from a philological one, — that is, 
with reference to the value of words, the use of lan- 
guage, and the ordinary rules which govern writers 
whose object it is to make themselves understood by 
those to whom their works are immediately addressed, 
— the interpretation proposed by Buckland to be given 
to the Mosaic description will not bear a moment's 
serious discussion. It is plain, from the whole tenor 
of the narrative, that the writer contemplated no such 
representation as that suggested ; nor could any such 
idea have entered into the minds of those to whom 
the account was first given. Dr. Buckland endeavors 

* Testimony of the Kocks, p. 10. 

Q 



258 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

to make out that we have here simply a case of leav- 
ing out facts which did not particularly concern the 
writer's purpose, so that he gave an account true so 
far as it went, though imperfect. 

" We may fairly ask," he argues, " of those persons who consider 
physical science a fit subject for revelation, what point they can 
imagine, short of a communication of Omniscience, at which such 
a revelation might have stopped without imperfections of omission, 
less in degree, but similar in kind, to that which they impute to 
the existing narrative of Moses. A revelation of so much only of 
astronomy as was known to Copernicus would have seemed imper- 
fect after the discoveries of Newton ; and a revelation of the sci- 
ence of Newton would have appeared defective to La Place. A 
revelation of all the chemical knowledge of the eighteenth century 
would have been as deficient, in comparison with the information 
of the present day, as what is now known in this science will prob- 
ably appear before the termination of another age. In the whole 
circle of sciences, there is not one to which this argument may not 
be extended, untQ we should require from revelation a full devel- 
opment of all the mysterious agencies that uphold the mechanism 
of the material world." 

Buckland's question is quite inapplicable to the real 
difficulty ; which is, not that circumstantial details are 
omitted, — that might reasonably be expected, — but 
that what is told is told so as to convey to ordinary 
apprehensions an impression at variance with facts. 
We are, indeed, told that certain writers of antiquity 
had already anticipated the liypothesis of the geolo- 
gist ; and two of the Christian Fathers (Augustine and 
Episcopius) are referred to as having actually held 
that a wide interval elapsed between the first act of 
creation mentioned in the Mosaic account, and the 
commencement of the six days' work.* If, however, 
they arrived at such a conclusion, it was simply be- 
cause, like the modern geologist, they had theories of 
their own to support, which led them to make some- 
what similar hypotheses. 

* See Dr. Pusey's note, — Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 21, 25. 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 259 

" After all," says Buckland, " it should be recol- 
lected that the question is not respecting the correct- 
ness of the Mosaic narrative, but of our interpretation 
of it ; " a proposition which can hardly be sufficiently 
reprobated. Such a doctrine, carried out unreservedly, 
strikes at the root of critical morality. It may, indeed, 
be sometimes possible to give two or three diiferent 
interpretations to one and the same passage, even in a 
modern and familiar tongue ; in which case, this may 
arise from the unskilfulness of the writer or speaker 
who has failed clearly to express his thought. In a 
dead or foreign language, the difficulty may arise from 
our own want of familiarity with its forms of speech ; 
or, in an ancient book, we may be puzzled by allusions, 
and modes of thought, the key to which has been lost. 
But it is no part of the commentator's or interpreter's 
business to introduce obscurity, or find difficulties 
where none exist ; and it cannot be pretended, that, 
taking it as a question of the use of words to express 
thoughts, there are any peculiar difficulties about 
understanding the first chapter of Genesis, whether 
in its original Hebrew, or in our common translation, 
which represents the original with all necessary exact- 
ness. The difficulties arise for the first time when we 
seek to import a meaning into the language which it 
certainly never could have conveyed to those to whom 
it was originally addressed. Unless we go the whole 
length of supposing the simple account of the Hebrew 
cosmogonist to be a series of awkward equivocations, 
in which he attempted to give a representation widely 
different from the facts, yet without trespassing 
against literal truth, we can find no difficulty in inter- 
preting his words. Although language may be, and 
often has been, used for the purpose, not of express- 



260 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

ing, but concealing thought, no such charge can faMy 
be laid against the Hebrew writer. 

'' It should be borne in mind," says Dr. Buckland, 
'' that the object of the account was, not to state 
in what manner^ but by whom, the world was made." 
Every one must see that this is an unfounded asser- 
tion, inasmuch as the greater part of the narrative 
consists in a minute and orderly description of the 
manner in which things were made. We can know 
nothing as to the object of the account, except from 
the account itself. What the writer meant to state is 
just that which he has stated, for all that we can know 
to the contrary. Or can we seriously believe, that, if 
appealed to by one of his Hebrew hearers or readers 
as to his intention, he would have replied, " My only 
object in what I have written is to inform you that 
God made the world : as to the manner of his doing 
it, of which I have given so exact an account, I have 
no intention that my words should be taken in their 
literal meaning " ? 

We come then to this, that, if we sift the Mosaic 
narrative of all definite meaning, and only allow it to 
be the expression of the most vague generalities ; if 
we avow that it admits of no certain interpretation, of 
none that may not be shifted and altered as often as 
we see fit, and as the exigencies of geology may 
require, — then may we reconcile it with what science 
teaches. This mode of dealing with the subject has 
been broadly advocated by a recent writer of mathe- 
matical eminence, who adopts the Bucklandian hypoth- 
esis ; a passage from whose work we shall quote : * — 



* Scripture and Science not at Variance. By J. H. Pratt, M. A., Arch- 
deacon of Calcutta, 1859. Third edition, p. 34. 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 261 

" The Mosaic account of the six days' work is thus harmonized 
by some : On the first day, Avhile the earth was ' without form, and 
void/ the result of a previous convulsion in nature, ' and darkness 
was upon the face of the deep,' God commanded light to shine 
upon the earth. This may have been effected by such a clearing 
of the thick and loaded atmosphere, as to allow the light of the 
sun to penetrate its mass with a suffused illumination, sufficient to 
dispel the total darkness which had prevailed, but proceeding from 
a source not yet apparent on the earth. On the second day, a 
separation took place in the thick vapory mass which lay upon the 
earth ; dense clouds were gathered up aloft, and separated by an 
expanse from the waters and vapors below. On the third day, 
these lower vapors, or fogs and mists, which hitherto concealed 
the earth, were condensed and gathered with the other waters of 
the earth into seas; and the dry land appeared. Then grass and 
herbs began to grow. On the fourth day, the clouds and vapors 
so rolled into separate masses, or were so entirely absorbed into 
the air itself, that the sun shone forth in all its brilliancy, the 
visible source of light and heat to the renovated earth, while the 
moon and stars gave light by night ; and God appointed them 
henceforth for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years, 
to his creatures whom he was about to call into existence, as he 
afterwards set or appointed his bow in the clouds, which had 
appeared ages before, to be a sign to Noah and his descendants. 
The fifth and sixth days' work needs no comment. 

" According to this explanation, the first chapter of Genesis 
does not pretend (as has been generally assumed) to be a cosmog- 
ony, or an account of the original creation of the material uni- 
verse. The only cosmogony which it contains, in that sense at 
least, is confined to the sublime declaration of the first verse, ' In 
the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.' The 
inspired record, thus stepping over an interval of indefinite ages 
with which man has no direct concern, proceeds at once to narrate 
the events preparatory to the introduction of man on the scene ; 
employing phraseology strictly faithful to the appearances which 
would have met the eye of man, could he have been a spectator 
on the earth of what passed during those six days. All this has 
been commonly supposed to be a more detailed account of the 
general truth announced in the first verse, — in short, a cosmogony. 
Such was the idea of Josephus : such probably was the idea of our 
translators ; for their version, ' without form, and void,' points to 
the primeval chaos, out of which all things were then supposed to 
emerge ; and these words, standing in limine, have tended, perhaps 
more than anything else, to foster the idea of a cosmogony in the 
minds of general readers to this very day. 

" The foregoing explanation many have now adopted. It is suf- 
ficient for my purpose, if it be a possible explanation, and if it meet 
the difficulties of the case. That it is possible in itself is plain 
from the fact above established, that the Scriptures wisely speak 
on natural things according to their appearances rather than their 



262 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

physical realities. It meets the difficulties of the case, because all 
the difficulties hitherto started against this chapter on scientific 
grounds proceeded on the principle that it is a cosmogony ; which 
this explanation repudiates, and thus disposes of the difficulties. 
It is, therefore, an explanation satisfactory to my own mind. I 
may be tempted to regret that I can gain no certain scientific 
information from Genesis regarding the process of the original cre- 
ation ; but I resist the temptation, remembering the great object 
for which the Scripture was given, — to tell man of his origin and 
fall, and to draw his mind to his Creator and Redeemer. Scrip- 
ture was not designed to teach us natural philosophy, and it is 
vain to attempt to make a cosmogony out of its statements. The 
Almighty declares himself the originator of all things ; but he con- 
descends not to describe the process or the laws by which he 
worked. All this he leaves for reason to decipher from the phe- 
nomena which his world displays. 

" This explanation, however, I do not wish to impose on Scrip- 
ture ; and am fully prepared to surrender it should further scientific 
discovery suggest another better fitted to meet all the requirements 
of the case." 

We venture to think that the world at large will 
continue to consider the account in the first chapter 
of Genesis to be a cosmogony-; but as it is here ad- 
mitted that it does not describe physical realities, but 
only outward appearances (that is, gives a description 
false in fact, and one which can teach us no scientific 
truth whatever), it seems to matter little what we call 
it. If its description of the events of the six days 
which it comprises be merely one of appearances, and 
not of realities, it can teach us nothing regarding 
them. 

Dissatisfied with the scheme of conciliation which 
has been discussed, other geologists have proposed 
to give an entirely mythical or enigmatical sense to 
the Mosaic narrative, and to consider the creative 
days described as vast periods of time. This plan 
was long ago suggested ; but is has of late enjoyed a 
high degree of popularity through the advocacy of the 
Scotch geologist Hugh Miller, an extract from whose 
work has been already quoted. Dr. Buckland gives 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 263 

the following account of the first form in which this 
theory was propounded, and of the grounds upon 
which he rejected it in favor of that of Chalmers : * — 

" A third opinion has been suggested both by learned theo- 
logians and by geologists, and on grounds independent of one 
another, — viz. that the days of the Mosaic creation need not be 
understood to imply the same length of time which is now occu- 
pied by a single revolution of the globe, but successive periods 
each of great extent ; and it has been asserted that the order of 
succession of the organic remains of a former world accords with 
the order of creation recorded in Genesis. This assertion, though 
to a certain degree apparently correct, is is not entirely supported 
by geological facts, since it appears that the most ancient marine 
animals occur in the same division of the lowest transition strata 
with the earliest remains of vegetables ; so that the evidence of 
organic remains, as far as it goes, shows the origin of plants and 
animals to have been contemporaneous. If any creation of vege- 
tables preceded that of animals, no evidence of such an event has 
yet been discovered by the researches of geology. Still there is, I 
believe, no sound critical or theological objection to the interpreta- 
tion of the word ' day ' as meaning a long period." 

Archdeacon Pratt also summarily rejects this view 

as untenable : f — 

" There is one other class of interpreters, however, with whom 
I find it impossible to agree : I mean those who take the six days 
to be six periods of unknown indefinite length. This is the prin- 
ciple of interpretation in a work on the ' Creation and the Fall,' by 
the Rev. D. Macdonald ; also in Mr. Hugh Miller's posthumous 
work, the ' Testimony of the Rocks ; ' and also in an admirable 
treatise on the ' Prae- Adamite Earth ' in Dr. Lardner's ' Museum 
of Science.' In this last it is the more surprising, because the 
successive chapters are in fact an accumulation of evidence which 
points the other way, as a writer in the ' Christian Observer,' 
January 1858, has conclusively shown. The late M. D'Orbigny 
has demonstrated in his ' Prodrome de Palseontologie,' after an 
elaborate examination of vast multitudes of fossils, that there have 
been at least twenty-nine distinct periods of animal and vegetable 
existence ; that is, twenty-nine creations separated one from an- 
other by catastrophes which have swept away the species existing 
at the time, with a very few solitary exceptions, never exceeding 
one and a half per cent of the whole number discovered, which 
have either survived the catastrophe, or have been erroneously 
designated. But not a single species of the preceding period sur- 
vived the last of these catastrophes ; and this closed the Tertiary 

* Bridgewater Treatise, p. 17. 

t Science and Scripture uot at Variance, p. 40, note. 



264 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

period and ushered in the Human period. The evidence adduced 
by M. D'Orbigny shows that both plants and animals appeared in 
ever}'- one of those twenty-nine periods. The notion, therefore, 
that the ' days ' of Genesis represent periods of creation from the 
beginninp; of things is at once refuted. The parallel is destroyed 
both in the number of the periods (thirty, including the Azoic, 
instead of six), and also in the character of the things created. 
No argument could be more complete ; and yet the writer of the 
' Prae- Adamite Earth,' in the last two pages, sums up his lucid 
sketch of M. D'Orbigny's researches by referring the account in 
the first chapter of Genesis to the whole creation from the begin- 
ning of all things, — a selection of epochs being made, as he imag- 
ines, for the six days or periods." 

Ill this trenchant manner do theological geologists 
overthrow one another's theories. However, Hugh 
Miller was perfectly aware of the difficulty involved 
in his view of the question ; and we shall endeavor 
to show the reader the manner in which he deals 
with it. 

He begins by pointing out, that the families of 
vegetables and animals were introduced upon earth 
as nearly as possible according to the great classes 
in which naturalists have arranged the modern flora 
and fauna. According to the arrangement of Lind- 
ley, he observes, — 

" Commencing at the bottom of the scale, we find the thallogens, 
or flowerless plants, which lack proper stems and leaves, — a class 
which includes all the algae. Next succeed the acrogens, or flower- 
less plants, that possess both stems and leaves, — such as the ferns 
and their allies. Next, omitting an inconspicuous class, repre- 
sented by but a few parasitical plants incapable of preservation as 
fossils, come the endogens, — monocotyledonous flowering plants, 
that include the palms, the Liliaceae, and several other families, all 
characterized by the parallel venation of their leaves. Next, omit- 
ting another inconspicuous tribe, there follows a very important 
class, the gymnogens, — polycotyledonous trees, represented by 
the coniferae and cycadaceae. And last of all come the dicotyle- 
donous exogens, — a class to which all our fruit and what are 
known as our forest trees belong, Avith a vastly preponderating 
majority of the herbs and flowers that impart fertility and beauty 
to our gardens and meadows." 

The order in which fossils of these several classes 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 265 

appear in the strata, Hugh Miller states to be as fol- 
lows : In the Lower Silurian, we find only thallogens ; 
in the Upper Silurian, acrogens are added. The gym- 
nogens appear rather prematurely, it might be thought, 
in the old red sandstone, the endogens (monocotyledo- 
nous) coming after them in the carboniferous group. 
Dicotyledonous exogens enter at the close of the 
oolitic period, and come to their greatest develop- 
ment in the tertiary. Again : the animal tribes have 
been introduced in an order closely agreeing with the 
geological di\'isions established by Cuvier. In the 
Silurian beds, the invertebrate creatures — the radiata, 
articulata, and moUusca — appear simultaneously. At 
the close of the period, fishes, the lowest of the ver- 
tebrata, appear ; before the old red sandstone period 
had passed away, reptiles had come into existence ; 
birds and the marsupial mammals enter in the oolitic 
period ; placental mammals, in the tertiary ; and man, 
last of all. 

Now, these facts do certainly tally to some extent 
with the Mosaic account, which represents fish and 
fowl as having been produced from the waters on the 
fifth day, reptiles and mammals from the earth on the 
sixth, and man as made last of all. The agreement, 
however, is far from exact, as, according to geological 
evidence, reptiles would appear to have existed ages 
before birds and mammals ; whereas here the creation 
of birds is attributed to the fifth day, that of reptiles 
to the sixth. There remains, moreover, the insuper- 
able difficulty of the plants and trees being repre- 
sented as made on the third day, — that is, more than 
an age before fishes and birds ; which is clearly not 
the case. 

Although, therefore, there is a superficial resem- 
12 



266 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

blance in the Mosaic account to that of the geologists, 
it is evident that the bare theory, that a "day " means 
an age or immense geological period, might be made 
to yield some rather strange results. What becomes 
of the evening and morning of which each day is said 
to have consisted ? Was each geologic age divided 
into two long intervals, one all darkness, the other all 
light ? and, if so, what became of the plants and trees 
created in the third day or period, when the evening 
of the fourth day (the evenings, be it observed, pre- 
cede the mornings) set in ? They must have passed 
through half a seculum of total darkness, not even 
cheered by that dim light wliich the sun, not yet 
completely manifested, supplied on the morning of the 
third day. Such an ordeal would have completely 
destroyed the whole vegetable creation ; and yet we 
find that it survived, and was appointed on the sixth 
day as the food of man and animals. In fact, we need 
only substitute the word " period" for " day" in the 
Mosaic narrative to make it very apparent that the 
writer at least had no such meaning, nor could he 
have conveyed any such meaning to those who first 
heard his account read. 

" It has been held," says Hugh Miller, " by accom- 
plished philologists, that the days of Mosaic creation 
may be regarded, without doing violence to the He- 
brew language, as successive periods of great ex- 
tent."* We do not believe tliat there is any ground 
for this doctrine. The word " day " is certainly used 
occasionally, in particular phrases, in an indefinite 
manner, not only in Hebrew, but other languages ; 
as, for instance, Gen. xxxix. 11, "About this time," 

* Testimony, p. 133. 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 26T 

Heb. literally, " about this day." But every such 
phrase explains itself ; and not only philology, but 
common sense, disclaims the notion, that when " day " 
is spoken of in terms like those in the first chapter 
of Genesis, and described as consisting of an even- 
ing and a morning, it can be understood to mean a 
seculum. 

Archdeacon Pratt, treating on the sa;iie subject, 
says (p. 41, note) : — 

" Were there no other ground of objection to this mode of inter- 
pretation, I think the wording of the fourth commandment is clearly 
opposed to it. Exod. xx. 8 : ' Remember the sabbath-day to keep 
it holy. 9. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work. 10. But 
the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God : in it thou 
shalt not do any work, — thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy 
man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger 
that is within thy gates. 11. For in six days the Lord made 
heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the 
seventh day : wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath-day, and hal- 
lowed it.' 

" Is it not a harsh and forced interpretation to suppose that the 
six days in ver. 9 do not mean the same as the six days in ver. 11, 
but that, in this last place, they mean six periods ? In reading 
through the eleventh verse, it is extremely difficult to believe that 
the seventh day is a long period, and the sabbath-day an ordinary 
day ; that is, that the same word ' day ' should be used in two such 
totally different senses in the same short sentence, and without any 
explanation." 

Hugh Miller saw the difficulty ; but he endeavors to 
escape the consequences of a rigorous application of 
the periodic theory by modifying it in a peculiar, and 
certainly ingenious manner. 

" Waiving," he says, " the question as a philological one, and 
simply holding with Cuvier, Parkinson, and Silliman, that each of 
the six days of the Mosaic account in the first chapter were what is 
assuredly meant by the day * referred to in the second (not natural 



^ The expression (Gen. ii 4): "In the day that the Lord God ci'eated 
the earth and heaven," to which Hugh Miller here refers, may possibly 
mean " at the time when; " meaning a week, year, or other limited time. 
But there is not the smallest reason for understanding it to mean " a length-' 
ened period," i. e. an immense lapse of time. Such a constniction would be 



268 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

days, but lengthened periods), I find myself called on, as a geolo- 
gist, -to account for but three out of the six. Of the period during 
which light Avas created ; of the period dui'ing which a firmament 
was made to separate the waters from the waters ; or of the period 
during which the two great lights of the earth, with the other heav- 
enly bodies, became visible from the earth's surface, — we need ex- 
pect to find no record in the rocks. Let me, however, pause for a 
moment to remark the peculiar character of the language in which 
we are first introduced, in the Mosaic narrative, to the heavenly bod- 
ies, — sun, moon, and stars. The moon, though absolutely one of the 
smallest lights of our system, is described as secondary and subor- 
dinate to only its greatest light, the sun. It is the apparent, then, 
not the actual, which we find in the passage ; what seemed to be, 
not what was : and, as it was merely what appeared to be greatest 
that was described as greatest, on what grounds are we to hold that 
it may not also have been what appeared at the time to be made 
that has been described as made ? Tlie sun, moon, and stars may 
have been created long before ; though it was not until this fourth 
day of creation that they became visible from the earth's surface."* 

The theory founded upon this hint is, that the 
Hebrew writer did not state facts, but merely cer- 
tain appearances, and those not of things which really 
happened, as assumed in the explanation adopted by 
Archdeacon Pratt, but of certain occurrences which 
were presented to him in a vision, and that this vision 
greatly deceived him as to what he seemed to see ; 
and thus, in effect, the real discrepancy of the nar- 
rative with facts is admitted. He had, in all, seven 
visions, to each of which he attributed the duration 
of a day ; although, indeed, each picture presented to 
him the earth during seven long and distinctly marked 
epochs. While, on the one hand, this supposition ad- 
mits all desirable latitude for mistakes and misrepre- 
sentations ; Hugh Miller, on the other hand, endeavors 
to show that a substantial agreement with the truth 



inadmissible in the Hebrew or any other lanmiafre. It is difficult to acquit 
Hugh J\liller of an equivocation here. In real truth, tiie second narrative 
is, as we have before observed, of distinct origin from the first; and we 
incline to the belief, that, in t.iis case also, "day" is to be takeu in its 
proper signification. 
•* Testimony, p. 134. 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 269 

exists, and to give sufficient reason for the mistakes. 
We must let him speak for himself : — 

" The geologist, in his attempts to collate the divine with the 
geologic record, has, I repeat, only three of the six periods of crea- 
tion to account for,* — the period of plants, the period of gi-eat 
sea-monsters and creeping things, and the period of cattle and 
beasts of the earth. He is called on to question his systems and 
formations regarding the remains of these three great periods, 
and of them only. And the question once foirly stated, what, I 
ask, is the reply '? All geologists agree in holding that the vast 
geological scale naturally divides into three great parts. There 
are many lesser divisions, — divisions into systems, formations, 
deposits, beds, strata ; but the master divisions, in each of which 
we find a type of life so unlike that of the others, that even the 
unpractised eye can detect the difference, are sim])ly three, — the 
palffiozoic, or oldest fossiliferous division ; the secondary, or middle 
fossiliferous division ; and the tertiary, or latest fossiliferous divis- 
ion. In the first, or palreozoic division, we find corals, crustaceans, 
moUusks, fishes ; and, in its later formations, a few reptiles. But 
none of these classes give its leading character to the palaeozoic : 
they do not constitute its prominent feature, or render it more re- 
markable as a scene of life than any of the divisions which followed. 
That which chiefly distinguished the palaeozoic from the secondary 
and tertiary periods was its gorgeous flora. It was em[)hatically 
the period of plants, — ' of herbs yielding seed after their kind.' In 
no other age did the world ever witness such a flora : the youth of 
the earth was peculiarly a green umbrageous youth, — a youth of 
dusk and tangled forests, of huge pines, and stately araucarians, 
of the reed-like calamite, the tall tree-fern, the sculptured sigillaria, 
and the hirsute lepidodendrons. Wherever dry land or shallow 
lakes or running stream appeared, from where Melville Island now 
spreads out its icy coast under the star of the pole, to where the 
arid plains of Australia lie solitary beneath the bright cross of the 
South, a rank and luxuriant herbage cumbered every foot-breadth 
of the dank and steaming soil ; and even to distant planets, our 
earth must have shone through the enveloping cloud with a green 
and delicate ray. . . . The geologic evidence is so complete as to 
be patent to all, that the first great period of organized being was, 
as described in the Mosaic record, peculiarly a period of herbs and 
trees yielding seed after their kind.' 

" The middle great period of the geologist — that of the second- 
ary division — possessed, like the earlier one, its herbs and plants ; 

* A very inadmissible assertion. Any one — be he geologist, astronomer, 
theologian, or philologist — who attempts to explain the Hebrew narrative, 
is bound to take it with all that really belongs to it. And in truth, if the 
fourth day really represented an epoch of creative activity, geology would 
be able to give some account of it. There is no reason to suppose that any 
intermission has taken place. 



270 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

but tliey were of a greatly less luxuriant and conspicuous character 
than their predecessors, and no longer formed the prominent trait 
or feature of the creation to which they belonged. The period had 
also its corals, its crustaceans, its mollusks, its fishes, and in some 
one or two exceptional instances, its dwarf mammals ; but the 
grand existences of the age — the existences in which it excelled 
every other creation, earlier or later — were its huge creeping 
things, — its enormous monsters of the deep, and, as shown by the 
impressions of their footprints stamped upon the rocks, its gigantic 
birds. It was peculiarly the age of egg-bearing animals, winged 
and wingless. Its wonderful whales, not, however, as now, of the 
mammalian, but of the reptilian class, — ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, 
and cetosaurs, — must have tempested the deep ; its creeping lizards 
and crocodiles, such as the teliosaurus, megalosaurus, and iguano- 
don, — creatures, some of which more than rivalled the existing 
elephant in height, and greatly more than rivalled him in bulk, — 
must have crowded the plains, or haunted by myriads the rivers of 
the period ; and we know that the footprints of at least one of its 
many birds are of fully twice the size of those made by the horse 
or camel. We are thus prepared to demonstrate, that the second 
period of the geologist was peculiarly and characteristically a pe- 
riod of whale-like reptiles of the sea, of enormous creeping reptiles 
of the land, and of numerous birds, some of them of gigantic size; 
and. In meet accordance with the fact, we find that the second Mosaic 
period with which the geologist is called on to deal was a period 
in which God created the fowl that flleth above the earth, with mov- 
ing (or creeping) creatures both in the waters and on land, and what 
our translation renders ' great whales,' but that I find rendered in 
the margin, 'great sea-monsters.' The tertiary period had also its 
prominent class of existences. Its flora seems to have been no 
more conspicuous than that of the present time : its reptiles occupy 
a very subordinate place ; but its beasts of the field were by far the 
most wonderfully developed, both in size and numbers, that ever 
appeared on earth. Its mammoths and its mastodons, its rhlnoccri 
and its hippopotami, its enormous dinotherlum and colossal mega- 
therium, greatly more than equalled in bulk the hugest mammals 

of the present time, and vastly exceeded them in number 

' Grand, indeed,' says an English naturalist, ' was the fauna of the 
British Islands in these early days. Tigers, as large again as the 
biggest Asiatic species, lurked in the ancient thickets; elephants, 
of nearly twice the bulk of the largest individuals that now exist in 
Africa or Ceylon, roamed in herds; at least two species of rhinoce- 
ros forced their way through the primeval forest ; and the lakes and 
rivers were tenanted by hippopotami as bulky, and with as great 
tusks, as those of Africa.' The massive cave-bear and large cave- 
hyena belonged to the same formidable group, with at least two 
species of great oxen (Bos lonrjifrons and Bos primif/enius), with a 
horse of smaller size, and an elk (Megaceros Ilibernicus') that stood 
ten feet four inches in height. Truly this Tertiary age — this third 
and last of the great geologic periods — was peculiarly the age of 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 271 

great ' beasts of the earth after their kind, and cattle after their 
kind.' " 

Thus by dropping the invertebrata and the early 
fishes and reptiles of the Palaeozoic period as incon- 
spicuous and of little account, and bringing prom- 
inently forward the carboniferous era which succeeded 
them as the most characteristic feature of the first 
great division ; by classing the great land reptiles of 
the secondary period with the moving creatures of the 
waters (for in the Mosaic account it does not appear 
that any inhabitants of the land were created on the 
fifth day) ; and evading the fact, that terrestrial rep- 
tiles seem to have preceded birds in their order of 
appearance upon earth, — the geologic divisions are 
tolerably well assimilated to the third, fifth, and sixth 
Mosaic days. These things were represented, we 
are told, to Moses in visionary pictures, and resulted 
in the short and summary account which he has 
given. 

There is something in this hypothesis very near to 
the obvious truth ; while, at the same time, something 
very remote from that truth is meant to be inferred. 
If it be said, the Mosaic account is simply the spec- 
ulation of some early Copernicus or Newton, who 
devised a scheme of the earth's formation as nearly 
as he might in accordance with his own observations 
of nature, and with such views of things as it was 
possible for an unassisted thinker in those days to 
take, we may admire the approximate correctness of 
the picture drawn, while we see that the writer, as 
might be expected, took everything from a different 
point of view from ourselves, and, consequently, rep- 
resented much quite differently from the fact. But 
nothing of this sort is really intended. We are asked 



272 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

to believe that a yision of creation was presented to 
him by divine power, for the purpose of enabhng 
him to inform the world of what he had seen ; which 
vision inevitably led him to give a description which 
has misled the world for centuries, and in which the 
truth can now only with difficulty be recognized. 
The Hebrew writer informs us, that, on the third day, 
" the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed 
after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed 
was in itself, after his kind ; '* and, in the twenty-ninth 
verse, that God on the sixth day said, " Behold, I have 
given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon 
the face of all the earth ; and every tree, in the which 
is the fruit of a tree yielding seed : to you it shall be 
for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to 
every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth 
upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given 
every green herb for meat." Can it be disputed, that 
the writer here conceives that grass, corn, and fruit 
were created on the third day, and with a view to the 
future nourishment of man and beast ? Yet, accord- 
ing to the vision hypothesis, he must have been 
greatly deceived ; for that luxuriant vegetation which 
he saw on the third day consisted, not of plants 
destined for the food of man, but for his fuel. It 
was the flora of the carboniferous period which he 
beheld ; concerning which Hugh Miller makes the fol- 
lowing remark, p. 24 : — 

" The existing plants whence we derive our analogies in dealing 
with the vegetation of this early period contribute but little, if at 
all, to the support of animal life. The ferns and their allies remain 
untouched by the grazing animals. Our native club-mosses, though 
once used in medicine, are positively deleterious ; the horsetails, 
though harmless, so abound in silex, which wraps them round with 
a cuticle of stone, that they are rarely cropped by cattle ; while the 
thickets of fern which cover our hillsides, and seem so tempt- 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 273 

ingly rich and green in their season, scarce support the existence 
of a single creature, and remain untouched in stem and leaf from 
their first appearance in spring, until they droop and wither under 
the frosts of early winter. Even the insects that infest the her- 
baria of the botanist almost never injure his ferns. Nor are our 
resin-producing conifers, though they nourish a few beetles, favor- 
ites with the herbivorous tribes in a much greater degree. Judging 
from all we yet know, the earliest terrestrial flora may have cov- 
ered the dry land with its mantle of cheerful green, and served its 
general purposes, chemical and others, in the well-balanced econ- 
omy of nature : but the herb-eating animals would have fared but 
ill, even where it throve most luxuriantly ; and it seems to har- 
monize with the fact of its unedible character, that, up to the 
present time, we know not that a single herbivorous animal lived 
amongst its shades." 

The Mosaic writer is, however, according to the theory, 
misled by the mere appearance of luxurious vegetation 
to describe fruit-trees and edible seed-bearing vege- 
tables as products of the third day. 

Hugh Miller's treatment of the description of the 
first dawn of light is not more satisfactory than that 
of Dr. Buckland. He supposes the prophet in his 
dream to have heard the command, " Let there be 
light," enunciated ; whereupon, " straightway a gray 
diffused light springs up in the east, and, casting its 
sickly gleam over a cloud-limited expanse of steaming 
vaporous sea, journeys through the heavens towards 
the west. One heavy, sunless day is made the repre- 
sentative of myriads : the faint light waxes fainter ; 
it sinks beneath the dim, undefined horizon." 

We are then asked to imagine that a second and a 
third day, each representing the characteristic features 
of a great distinctly marked epoch, and the latter of 
them marked by the appearance of a rich and luxu- 
riant vegetation, are presented to the seer's eye ; but 
without sun, moon, or stars as yet entering into his 
dream. These appear first in his fourth vision ; and 
then, for the first time, we have a " brilliant day ; " 
12* E 



274 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

and the seer, struck with the novelty, describes the 
heavenly bodies as being the most conspicuous objects 
in the picture. In reality, we know that he represents 
them (ver. 16) as having been made^ and set in the 
heavens, on that day ; though Hugh Miller avoids 
reminding us of this. 

In one respect, the theory of Hugh Miller agrees 
with that advocated by Dr. Buckland and Archdeacon 
Pratt. Both these theories divest the Mosaic narra- 
tive of real accordance with fact ; both assume that 
appearances only, not facts, are described, and that in 
riddles ; which would never have been suspected to 
be such, had we not arrived at the truth from other 
sources. It would be difficult for controversialists to 
cede more completely tlie point in dispute, or to ad- 
mit more explicitly that the Mosaic narrative does not 
represent correctly the history of tlie universe up to 
the time of man. At the same time, the upholders of 
each theory see insuperable objections in details to 
that of their allies, and do not pretend to any firm 
faith in their own. How can it be otherwise, when 
the task proposed is to evade the plain meaning of 
language, and to introduce obscurity into one of the 
simplest stories ever told, for the sake of making it 
accord with the complex system of the universe which 
modern science has unfolded ? The spectacle of able, 
and, we doubt not, conscientious writers, engaged in 
attempting the impossible, is painful and humiliating. 
They evidently do not breathe freely over their work, 
but shuffle and stumble over their difficulties in a pite- 
ous manner ; nor are they themselves again until they 
return to the pure and open fields of science. 

It is refreshing to return to the often-echoed re- 
mark, that it could not have been the object of a divine 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 2T5 

revelation to instruct mankind in physical science ; 
man having liad faculties bestowed upon liim to enable 
him to acquire this knowledge by himself. This is, 
in fact, pretty generally admitted ; but, in the appli- 
cation of the doctrine, writers play at fast and loose 
with it according to circumstances. Thus an inspired 
writer may be permitted to allude to the phenomena 
of nature, according to the vulgar view of such things, 
without impeachment of his better knowledge ; but, if 
he speaks of the same phenomena assertively, we are 
bound to suppose that things are as he represents 
them, however much our knowledge of nature may 
be disposed to recalcitrate. But, if we find a dif- 
ficulty in admitting that such misrepresentations can 
find a place in revelation, the difficulty lies in our 
having previously assumed what a divine revelation 
ought to be. If God made use of imperfectly in- 
formed men to lay the foundations of that higher 
knowledge for which the human race was destined, is 
it wonderful that they should have committed them- 
selves to assertions not in accordance with facts, al- 
though they may have believed them to be true ? On 
what grounds has the popular notion of divine reve- 
lation been built up ? Is it not plain that the plan of 
Providence for the education of man is a progressive 
one ? and, as imperfect men have been used as the 
agents for teaching mankind, is it not to be expected 
that their teachings should be partial, and, to some 
extent, erroneous ? Admitted, as it is, that physical 
science is not what the Hebrew writers, for the most 
part, profess to convey ; at any rate, that it is not on 
account of the communication of such knowledge tliat 
we attach any value to their writings, — why should 
-we hesitate to recognize their fallibiHty on this head ? 



276 MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 

Admitting, as is historically and in fact the case, 
that it was the mission of the Hebrew race to lay the 
foundation of religion upon the earth, and that Provi- 
dence used this people specially for this purpose, is it 
not our business and our duty to look and see how 
this has really been done ? not forming for ourselves 
theories of what a revelation ought to be, or how 
we, if intrusted with the task, would have made one, 
but inquiring how it has pleased God to do it. In all 
his theories of the world, man has at first deviated 
widely from the truth, and has only gradually come 
to see how far otherwise God has ordered things than 
the first daring speculator had supposed. It has been 
popularly assumed, that the Bible, bearing the stamp 
of divine authority, must be complete, perfect, and 
unimpeachable in all its parts ; and a thousand difficul- 
ties and incoherent doctrines have sprung out of this 
theory. Men have proceeded in the matter of theol- 
ogy as they did with physical science before induc- 
tive philosophy sent them to the feet of Nature, and 
bid them learn, in patience and obedience, the lessons 
which she had to teach. Dogma and groundless as- 
sumption occupy the place of modest inquiry after 
truth ; while, at tlie same time, the upholders of these 
theories claim credit for humility and submissiveness. 
This is exactly inverting the fact. The humble schol- 
ar of truth is not he, who, taking his stand upon the 
traditions of rabbins, Christian Fathers, or schoolmen, 
insists upon bending facts to his unyielding standard ; 
but he who is willing to accept such teacliing as it 
has pleased Divine Providence to afford, without mur- 
muring that it has not been furnished more copiously 
or clearly. 

The Hebrew race, their works and their books, are 



MOSAIC COSMOGONY. 277 

great facts in the history of man. The influence of 
the mind of this people upon the rest of mankind has 
been immense and pecuhar, and there can be no diffi- 
culty in recognizing therein the hand of a directing 
Providence ; but we may not make ourselves wiser 
than God, nor attribute to him methods of procedure 
which are not his. If, then, it is plain that he has not 
thought it needful to communicate to the writer of 
the Cosmogony that knowledge which modern re- 
searches have revealed, why do we not acknowledge 
this, except that it conflicts with a human theory 
which presumes to point out how God ought to have 
instructed man ? The treatment to which the Mosaic 
narrative is subjected by the tlieological geologists is 
anything but respectful. The writers of this school, 
as we have seen, agree in representing it as a series of 
elaborate equivocations, — a story which " palters with 
us in a double sense." But, if we regard it as the 
speculation of some Hebrew Descartes or Newton, 
promulgated in all good faith as the best and most 
probable account that could be then given of God's 
universe, it resumes the dignity and value of which 
the writers in question have done their utmost to de- 
prive it. It has been sometimes felt as a difficulty 
to taking this view of the case, that the writer asserts 
so solemnly and unhesitatingly that for which he must 
have known that he had no authority ; but this arises 
only from our modern habits of thought, and from the 
modesty of assertion which the spirit of true science 
has taught us. Mankind has learned caution through 
repeated slips in the process of tracing out the truth. 

The early speculator was harassed by no such scru- 
ples, and asserted as facts what he knew in reality 
only as probabilities : but we are not on that account 



278 MOSAIC COSilOGONY. 

to doubt his perfect good faith ; nor need we attribute 
to liim wilful misrepresentation, or consciousness of 
asserting that which he knew not to be true. He had 
seized one great truth, in which, indeed, he anticipated 
the highest revelation of modern inquiry ; namely, the 
unity of the design of the world, and its subordina- 
tion to one sole Maker and Lawgiver. "With regard 
to details, observation failed him. He knew little 
of the earth's surface, or of its shape, and place in 
the universe ; the infinite varieties of organized ex- 
istences which people it, the distinct floras and faunas 
of its different continents were unknown to him : but 
he saw that all which lay within his observation had 
been formed for the benefit and service of man, and 
the goodness of tlie Creator to his creatures was the 
thought predominant in his mind. Man's closer re- 
lation to his Maker is indicated by the representa- 
tion that he was formed last of all creatures, and in 
the visible likeness of God. For ages, this simple 
view of creation satisfied the wants of man, and 
formed a sufUcicnt basis of theological teaching ; and, 
if modern research now shows it to be physically un- 
tenable, our respect for the narrative which has played 
so important a part in the culture of our race need 
be in nowise diminished. No one contends that it 
can be used as a basis of astronomical or geological 
teaching ; and those who profess to see in it an ac- 
cordance with facts, only do this suh modo, and by 
processes which despoil it of its consistency and grand- 
eur, both which may be preserved if we recognize 
in it, not an authentic utterance of divine knowledge, 
but a human utterance, which it has pleased Prov- 
idence to use in a special way for the education of 
mankind. 



TENDENCIES OE RELIGIOUS THOUGHT IN 
ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 

By MAKK PATTISON, B. D. 

THE thirty years of peace which succeeded the 
peace of Utrecht (1714) " was the most pros- 
perous season that England had ever experienced ; 
and the progression, though slow, being uniform, the 
reign of George 11. might not disadvantageously be 
compared, for the real happiness of the community, 
with that more brilliant but uncertain and oscillatory 
condition which has ensued. A laborer's wages have 
never for many ages commanded so large a portion of 
subsistence as in this part of the eighteenth cen- 
tury " (Hallam, Const. Hist., ii. 464). 

This is the aspect which that period of history 
wears to the political philosopher. The historian of 
moral and religious progress, on the other hand, is 
under the necessity of depicting the same period as 
one of decay of religion, licentiousness of morals, 
public corruption, profaneness of language, — a day of 
" rebuke and blasphemy." Even those who look with 
suspicion on the contemporary complaints from the 
Jacobite clergy, of " decay of religion," will not hesi- 
tate to say that it was an age destitute of depth or 
earnestness ; an age whose poetry was without ro- 
mance, whose philosophy was without insight, and 



280 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

whose public men were without character ; an age of 
" light without love," whose " very merits were of the 
earth, earthy." In this estimate, the followers of 
Mill and Carlyle will agree with those of Dr. New- 
man. 

The Stoical moralists of the second century, who 
witnessed a similar coincidence of moral degradation 
and material welfare, had no difificulty in connecting 
them together as effect with cause : " Bona rerum 
secundarum optabilia, adversarum mirabilia " (Sen- 
eca, ad LnciL, 6(j}. But the famous theory which 
satisfied the political philosophers of antiquity — viz. 
that the degeneracy of nations is due to the inroads of 
luxury — is laughed to scorn by modern economists. 
It is, at any rate, a theory which can hardly be adopt- 
ed by those who pour unmeasured contempt on the 
eighteenth, by way of contrast with the revival of 
higher principles by tlie nineteenth century. It is 
especially since the High-Church movement com- 
menced that the theology of the eighteenth century 
has become a byword. The genuine Anglican omits 
that period from the history of the Church altogether. 
In constructing his " Catenae Patrum," he closes his 
list with Waterland or Brett, and leaps at once to 1833, 
when the "Tracts for the Times" commenced, — as 
Charles II. dated his reign from his father's death. 
Such a legal fiction may be harmless or useful for 
purposes of mere form ; but the facts of history cannot 
be disposed of by forgetting them. Both the Church 
and the world of to-day are what they are as the 
result of the whole of their antecedents. The history 
of a party may be written on the theory of periodical 
occultation ; but he who wishes to trace the descent 
of religious thought, and the practical working of 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 281 

the religions ideas, must follow these through all the 
phases they have actually assumed. We have not yet 
learnt, in this country, to write our ecclesiastical his- 
tory on any better footing than that of praising up 
the party, in or out of the Church, to which we hap- 
pen to belong. Still further are we from any attempt 
to apply the laws of thought, and of the succession 
of opinion, to the course of English theology. The 
recognition of the fact, that the view of the eternal 
verities of religion which prevails in any given age is 
in part determined by the view taken in the age which 
preceded it, is incompatible with the hypothesis gen- 
erally prevalent among us as to the mode in which 
we form our notions of religious truth. Upon none 
of the prevailing theories as to this mode is a deduc- 
tive history of theology possible. 1. The Catholic 
theory, which is really that of Roman Catholics, and 
professedly that of some Anglo-Catholics, withdraws 
Christianity altogether from human experience and 
the operation of the ordinary laws of thought. 2. The 
Protestant theory of free inquiry, which supposes that 
each mind takes a survey of the evidence, and strikes 
t4ie balance of probability according to the best of its 
judgment, — this theory defers, indeed, to the abstract 
laws of logic, but overlooks the influences of educa- 
tion. If, without hypothesis, we are content to observe 
facts, we shall find that we cannot decline to study 
the opinions of any age, only because they are not our 
own opinions. There is a law of continuity in the 
progress of theology, which, whatever we may wish, 
is never broken off. In tracing the filiation of con- 
secutive systems, we cannot afford to overlook any 
link in the chain, any age, except one in which relig- 
ious opinion did not exist. Certainly we, in this 



282 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

our time, if we would understand our own position in 
the Church, and that of the Church in the age ; if we 
would hold any clew through the maze of religious 
pretension which surrounds us, — cannot neglect those 
immediate agencies in the production of the present, 
which had their origin towards the beginning of the 
eighteenth century. 

Of these agencies there are three, the present in- 
fluence of which cannot escape the most inattentive. 

1. The formation and gradual growth of that compro- 
mise between Church and State, which is called Toler- 
ation ; and which, believed by many to be a principle, 
is a mere arrangement between two principles. But, 
such as it is, it is part of our heritage from the last 
age ; and is the foundation, if foundation it can be 
called, upon which we still continue to build, as in the 
late act for the admission of the Jews to Parliament. 

2. The great rekindling of the religious consciousness 
of the people, which, without the Established Church, 
became Methodism, and within its pale has obtained 
the name of the Evangelical movement. However 
decayed may be the Evangelical party as a party, it 
cannot be denied that its influence, both on our relig- 
ious ideas and on our church life, has penetrated 
far beyond those party limits. 3. The growth and 
gradual diffusion, through all religious thinking, of 
the supremacy of reason. This, which is rather a 
principle, or a mode of thinking, than a doctrine 
may be properly enough called " Rationalism." This 
term is used in this country with so much laxity, that 
it is impossible to define the sense in which it is gen- 
erally intended ; but it is often taken to mean a system 
opposed to revealed religion, imported into this coun- 
try from Germany at the beginning of the present 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 283 

century. A person, however, who surveys the course 
of English theology during the eighteenth century, 
will have no difficulty in recognizing, that throughout 
all discussions, underneath all controversies, and com- 
mon to all parties, lies the assumption of the suprem- 
acy of reason in matters of religion. The Kantian 
philosophy did but bring forward hi to light, and give 
scientific form and a recognized position to, a principle 
which had long unconsciously guided all treatment of 
religious topics both in Germany and in England. 
Rationalism was not an anti-Christian sect outside the 
Church, making war against religion : it was a habit 
of thought ruling all minds, under the conditions 
of which all alike tried to make good the peculiar 
opinions they might happen to cherish. The Church- 
man differed from the Socinian, and the Socinian from 
the Deist, as to the number of articles in his creed ; 
but all alike consented to test their belief by the 
rational evidence for it. Whether given doctrines or 
miracles were conformable to reason or not, was dis- 
puted between the defence and the assault ; but that 
all doctrines were to stand or fall by that criterion, 
was not questioned. The principles and the priority 
of natural religion formed the common hypothesis on 
the ground of which the disputants argued whether 
anything, and what, had been subsequently commu- 
nicated to man in a supernatural way. The line 
between those who believed much and those who be- 
lieved little cannot be sharply drawn. Some of the 
so-called Deists were, in fact, Socinians ; as Toland, 
who expressly admits all those parts of the New 
Testament revelation which are, or seem to him, 
comprehensible by reason. ^Christianity not Myste- 
rious.^ Nor is there any ground for thinking that 



284 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

Toland was insincere in his profession of rational 
Christianity, as was insinuated by his opponents ; e. g-. 
Leland (^Vieiu of the Deistical Writers^ vol. i. p. 49). 
A more candid adversary (Leibnitz) , who knew Toland 
personally, is " glad to believe that the design of this 
author, a man of no common ability, and, as I think, 
a well-disposed person, was to withdraw men from 
speculative theology to the practice of its precepts." 
(^Amiotatiuncidce subitanecs.') Hardly one here and 
there, as Hume, professed Rationalism in the extent 
of Atheism : the great majority of writers were em- 
ployed in constructing a via media between Atheism 
and Athanasianism ; while the most orthodox were 
diligently " hewing and chiselling Christianity into 
an intelligible human system, which they then repre- 
sented, as thus mutilated, as affording a remarkable 
evidence of the truth of the Bible." (^Tracts for the 
Times, vol. ii. No. 73.) The title of Locke's treatise, 
" The Reasonableness of Christianity," may be said to 
have been the solitary thesis of Christian theology in 
England for great part of a century. 

If we are to put chronological limits to this system 
of religious opinion in England, we might, for the 
sake of a convenient landmark, say that it came in 
Avith the Revolution of 1688, and began to decline 
in vigor with the reaction against the Reform move- 
ment about 1830. Locke's " Reasonableness of Chris- 
tianity " would thus open, and the commencement of 
the " Tracts for the Times " mark the fall of Rational- 
ism. Not that chronology can ever be exactly applied 
to the mutations of opinion ; for there were Ration- 
alists before Locke, — e.g. Hales of Eton, and other 
Arminians ; nor has the Church of England unani- 
mously adopted the principles of the " Tracts for the 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 285 

Times." But, if we were to follow up Cave's nomen- 
clature, the appellation Seculum rationalisticum might 
be affixed to the eighteenth century with greater 
precision than many of his names apply to the pre- 
vious centuries : for it was not merely that Ration- 
alism then obtruded itself as a heresy, or obtained a 
footing of toleration within the Church ; but the ra- 
tionalizing method possessed itself absolutely of the 
whole field of theology. With some trifling excep- 
tions, the whole of religious literature was drawn in 
to the endeavor to " prove the truth " of Christianity. 
The essay and the sermon, the learned treatise and 
the philosophical disquisition, Addison the polite writ- 
er, and Bentley the classical philologian (Addison, 
" Evidences of the Christian Religion," a posthumous 
publication ; Bentley, " Eight Sermons at Boyle's 
Lecture," 1692), the astronomer Newton ("Four Let- 
ters," &c., Lond. 1756), no less than the theologians 
by profession, were all engaged upon the same task. 
To one book of A. Colhns (" A Discourse on the 
Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion," 
Lond. 1724) are counted no less than thirty-five an- 
swers. Dogmatic theology had ceased to exist : the 
exhibition of religious truth for practical purposes 
was confined to a few obscure writers. Every one 
who had anything to say on sacred subjects drilled it 
into an array of argument against a supposed objector. 
Christianity appeared made for nothing else but to be 
" proved : " what use to make of it when it was proved 
was not much thought about. Reason was at first 
offered as the basis of faith, but gradually became its 
substitute. The mind never advanced as far as the 
stage of belief ; for it was unceasingly engaged in rea- 
soning up to it. The only quality in Scripture which 



286 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

was dwelt upon was its " credibility." Even the 
" Evangelical " school, which had its origin in a re- 
action against the dominant Rationalism, and began in 
endeavors to kindle religious feeling, was obliged to 
succumb at last. It, too, drew out its rational " scheme 
of Christianity," in which the atonement was made the 
central point of a system, and the death of Christ was 
accounted for as necessary to satisfy the Divine Jus- 
tice. 

This whole rationalist age must again be subdivided 
into two periods, the theology of which, though be- 
longing to the common type, has distinct specific 
characters. These periods are of nearly equal length ; 
and we may conveniently take the middle year of the 
century, 1750, as our terminus of division. Though 
both periods were engaged upon the proof of Cliristi- 
anity, the distinction between them is that the first 
period was chiefly devoted to the internal, the second 
to the external, attestations. In the first period, the 
main endeavor was to show that there was nothing in 
the contents of the revelation which was not agree- 
able to reason. In the second, from 1750 onwards, 
the controversy was narrowed to what are usually 
called the " evidences," or the historical proof of the 
genuineness and authenticity of the Christian records. 
From this distinction of topic arises an important dif- 
ference of value between the theological produce of 
the two periods. A great injustice is done to the 
eighteenth century, when its whole speculative pro- 
duct is set down under tlie description of that Old 
Bailey theology, in which, to use Johnson's illustra- 
tion, the apostles are being tried once a week for the 
capital crime of forgery. This evidential school — 
the school of Lardner, Paley, and Whately — belongs 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 287 

strictly to the latter half only of the period now under 
consideration. This school, which treated the exterior 
evidence, was tlie natural sequel and supplement of 
that which had preceded it, which dealt with the in- 
trinsic credibility of the Christian revelation. This 
historical succession of the schools is the logical order 
of the argument ; for, when we have first shown that 
the facts of Christianity are not incredible, the whole 
burden of proof is shifted to the evidence that the 
facts did really occur. Neither branch of the argu- 
ment can claim to be religious instruction at all ; but 
the former does incidentally enter upon the substance 
of the gospel. It may be philosophy rather than 
theology ; but it raises in its course some of the most 
momentous problems which can engage the human 
mind. On the other hand, a mind which occupies 
itself with the " external evidences " knows nothing 
of the spiritual intuition, of which it renounces at 
once the difficulties and the consolations. The supply 
of evidences in what, for the sake of a name, may be 
called the Georgian period (1750-1830), was not oc- 
casioned by any demands of controversy. The attacks 
through the press were nearly at an end : the Deists 
had ceased to be. The clergy continued to manufac- 
ture evidence as an ingenious exercise, a literature 
which was avowedly professional, a study which 
might seem theology without being it, which could 
awaken none of the scepticism then dormant beneath 
the surface of society. Evidences are not edged 
tools ; they stir no feeling : they were the proper 
theology of an age whose literature consisted in 
writing Latin hexameters. The orthodox school no 
longer dared to scrutinize the contents of revelation. 
The preceding period had eliminated the religious 



288 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

experience : the Georgian had lost, besides, the power 
of using the speculative reason. 

The historical investigation, indeed, of the Origines 
of Christianity, is a study scarcely second in impor- 
tance to a philosophical arrangement of its doctrines. 
But, for a genuine inquiry of this nature, the English 
writers of the period had neither the taste nor the 
knowledge. Gibbon alone approached the true diffi- 
culties, but met only with opponents, " victory over 
whom was a sufficient humiliation." (^Autobiography.') 
No Englishman will refuse to join with Coleridge in 
" the admiration " he expresses " for tlie head and 
heart " of Paley ; " the incomparable grace, propriety, 
and persuasive facility, of his writings." (^Aids to 
Reflection^ p. 401.) But Paley had, unfortunately, 
dedicated his powers to a factitious thesis : his dem- 
onstration, however perfect, is in unreal matter. 
The case, as the apologists of that day stated it, is 
wholly conventional. The breadth of their assump- 
tions is out of all proportion to the narrow dimensions 
of the point they succeeded in proving. Of an honest 
critical inquiry into the origin and composition of the 
canonical writings, there is but one trace, — Herbert 
Marsh's Lectures at Cambridge ; and that was sug- 
gested from a foreign source, and died away without 
exciting imitators. That investigation, introduced by 
a bishop and a professor of divinity, has scarcely yet 
obtained a footing in the English Church ; but it is 
excluded, not from a conviction of its barrenness, but 
from a fear that it might prove too fertile in results. 
This unwholesome state of theological feeling among 
us is perhaps traceable in part to the falsetto of the 
evidential method of the last generation. We cannot 
Justify, but we may perhaps make our predecessors 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 289 

bear part of the blame of, that inconsistency, which, 
while it professes that its religious belief rests on his- 
torical evidence, refuses to allow that evidence to be 
freely examined in open court. 

It seems, indeed, a singular infelicity, that the con- 
struction of the historical proof should have been the 
task which the course of events allotted to the latter 
half of the eighteenth century. The critical knowl- 
edge of antiquity had disappeared from the universi- 
ties. The past, discredited by a false conservatism, 
was regarded with aversion, and the minds of men 
directed habitually to the future, some with fear, 
others with hope. " The disrespect m which history 
was held by the French philosophes is notorious : one 
of the soberest of them (D'Alembert, we believe) was 
the author of the wish, that all record of past events 
could be blotted out." (Mill, Dissertations^ vol. i. 
p. 426.) The same sentiment was prevalent, though 
not in the same degree, in this country. Hume, writ- 
ing to an Englishman in 1756, speaks of " your 
countrymen " as " given over to barbarous and ab- 
surd faction." Of his own history, the publisher, 
Millar, told him he had only sold forty-five copies in a 
twelvemonth. (^My Own Life^ p. 5.) Warburton had 
long before complained of the Chronicles published by 
Hearne, that "• there is not one that is not a disgrace 
to letters ; most of them are so to common sense, and 
some even to human nature." (Parr's Tracts^ <fec., 
p. 109.) The oblivion into which the remains of 
Christian antiquity had sunk, till disinterred by the 
Tractarian movement, is well known. Having neither 
the critical tools to work with, nor the historical ma- 
terials to work upon, it is no wonder if they failed 
in their art. Theology had almost died out when it 
13 s 



290 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

received a new impulse and a new direction from Cole- 
ridge. The evidence-makers ceased from their futile 
labors all at once, as beneath the spell of some magi- 
cian. Englishmen heard with as much surprise as if 
the doctrine was new, that the Christian faith, the 
Athanasian Creed, of which they had come to wish 
that the Church was well rid, was " the perfection of 
human intelligence ; " that " the compatibility of a 
document with the conclusions of self-evident reason 
and with the laws of conscience is a condition a priori 
of any evidence adequate to the proof of its having 
been revealed by God," and that this " is a principle 
clearly laid down by Moses and St. Paul ; " lastly, that 
" there are mysteries in Christianity, but that these 
mysteries are reason, — reason in its highest form of 
self-afhrmation." (^Aids to Reflection, pref. Lit. Re- 
maiAs, iii. 293.) In this position of Coleridge the 
Rationalist theology of England, which was in the 
last stage of decay and dotage, seemed to recover a 
second youth, and to revert at once to the point from 
which it had started a century before. 

Should the religious historian then acknowledge 
that the impatient contempt with which '' the last 
century " is now spoken of is justifiable with respect 
to the later period, with its artificial monotone of 
proof that is no proof, he will by no means allow 
the same of the earlier period, — 1688 - 1750. The 
superiority which the theological writing of this pe- 
riod has over that which succeeded it, is to be re- 
ferred in part to the superiority of the internal over 
the external proof of Christianity as an object of 
thought. 

Both methods alike, as methods of argumentative 
proof, place the mind in an unfavorable attitude for 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 291 

the consideration of religious truth. It is Hke remov- 
ing ourselves, for the purpose of examining an object, 
to the furthest point from which the object is visible. 
Neither the external nor the internal evidences are 
properly theology at all. Theology is, first and prima- 
rily, the contemplative, speculative habit, by means of 
which the mind places itself already in another world 
than this ; a habit begun here, to be raised to perfect 
vision hereafter. Secondly, and in an inferior degree, 
it is ethical and regulative of our conduct as men, in 
those relations which are temporal and transitory. 
Argumentative proof that such knowledge is possible 
can never be substituted for the knowledge, without 
detriment to the mental habit. What is true of an 
individual is true of an age. When an age is found 
occupied in proving its creed, this is but a token 
that the age has ceased to have a proper belief in it. 
Nevertheless, there is a difference in this respect be- 
tween the sources from which proof may be fetched. 
Where it is busied in establishing the " genuineness 
and authenticity " of the books of Scripture, neglect- 
ing its religious lessons, and drawing out instead " the 
undesigned coincidences," Rationalism is seen in its 
dullest and least spiritual form. When, on the other 
hand, the contents of the revelation are being freely 
examined, and reason, as it is called, but really the 
philosophy in vogue, is being applied to determine 
whether the voice be the voice of God or not, the 
reasoner is indeed approaching his subject from a 
false point of view, but he is still engaged with the 
eternal verities. The reason has prescribed itself an 
impossible task when it has undertaken to prove, 
instead of evolve them ; to argue, instead of appro- 
priate them. But, anyhow, it is handling them ; and, 



292 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

by the contact, is raised in some measure to the 
" height of that great argument." 

This acknowledgment seems due to the period now 
referred to. It is, perhaps, rather thinking of its pul- 
pit eloquence than its controversies, that Professor 
Fraser does not hesitate to call this " the golden age 
of English theology." QEssays in Philosophy, p. 205.) 
Such language, as applied to our great preachers, 
was once matter of course ; but would now hardly 
be used by any Anglican, and has to be sought for in 
the mouth of members of another communion. The 
names which once commanded universal homage 
among us, — the Souths, Barrows, Tillotsons, Sher- 
locks, — excite, perhaps, only a smile of pity. Liter- 
ary taste is proverbially inconstant : but theological 
is still more so ; for here we have no rule or chart to 
guide us but the taste of our age. Bossuet, Bourda- 
loue, and Massillon have survived a dozen political 
revolutions. We have no classical theology, though 
we have not had a political revolution since 1660 ; 
for in this subject-matter the most of Englishmen 
have no other stand and of merit than the prejudices 
of sect. Eminence only marks out a great man for 
more cordial hatred. Every flippant High-Church 
reviewer has learnt to fling at Locke, the father of 
English Rationalism, and the greatest name among 
its worthies. Others are, perhaps, only less disliked 
because less known ; " qui n'a pas de lecteurs, n'a 
pas d'adversaires." The principal writers in the De- 
istical controversy, either side of it, have expiated 
the attention they once engrossed by as universal an 
oblivion. 

The Deistical controversy, the all-absorbing topic 
of religious writers and preachers during the wiiole of 



IN ENGLAND, 16S8-1750. 293 

this first period, has pretty well-defined limits. Stil- 
lingfleet, who died Bishop of Worcester in the last 
year (1699) of the seventeenth century, marks the 
transition from the old to the new argument. In 
the six folios of Stillingfleet's works may be found the 
latest echoes of the Romanist controversy, and the 
first declaration of war against Locke. The Deistical 
controversy attained its greatest intensity in the twen- 
ties (1720-1740), after the subsidence of the Ban- 
gorian controversy, which for a time had diverted 
attention to itself; and it gradually died out towards 
the middle of the century. The decay of interest 
in the topic is sufficiently marked by the fact, that 
the opinions of Hume failed to stimulate curiosity or 
antagonism. His " Treatise of Human Nature " (1739) 
" fell dead-born from the press ; " and the only one of 
his philosophical writings which was received with 
favor on its first appearance was one on the new 
topic, " Political Discourses " (1752). Of this he says, 
" It was the only work of mine which was successful 
on the first publication ; being well received both 
abroad and at home." QMy Own Life.) Bolingbroke, 
who died in 1751, was the last of the professed 
Deists. When his works were brought out by his 
executor (Mallet) in 1754, the interest in them was 
already gone : they found the public cold or indis- 
posed. It was a rusty blunderbuss, which he need 
not have been afraid to have discharged himself, in- 
stead of " leaving half a crown to a Scotchman to let 
it off after his death." (^Boswell, p. 88.) To talk 
Deism had ceased to be fashionable as soon as it 
ceased to attract attention. 

The Rationalism, which is the cbmmon character of 
all the writers of this time, is a method, rather than 



294 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

a doctrine ; an unconscious assumption, rather than a 
principle from which they reason. They would, how- 
ever, all have consented in statements such as the 
following, — Bishop Gibson, "Second Pastoral Let- 
ter," 1730: — 

" Those among us who have labored of late years to set up reason 
against revelation would make it pass for an established truth, that, 
if you will embrace revelation, you must of course quit your reason ; 
which, if it were true, would doubtless be a strong prejudice against 
revelation. But so far is this from being true, that it is univer- 
sally acknowledged that revelation itself is to stand or fall hy the 
test of reason ; or, in other words, according as reason finds the 
evidences of its coming from God to be or not to be sufficient and 
'conclusive, and the matter of it to contradict or not contradict the 
natural notions which reason gives us of the being and attributes 
of God." 

Prideaux (Humphrey, Dean of Norwich), " Letter 
to the Deists," 1748 : — 

" Let what is written in all the books of the New Testament be 
tried by that which is the touchstone of all religions ; I mean that 
religion of nature and reason which God has written in the hearts 
of every one of us from the first creation : and if it varies from it 
in any one particular, if it prescribes any one thing which may in 
the minutest circumstances thereof be contrary to its righteousness, 
I will then acknowledge this to be an argument against us, strong 
enough to overthrow the whole cause, and make all things else that 
can be said for it totally ineffectual for its support." 

Tillotson (Archbishop of Canterbury), " Sermons," 
vol. hi. p. 485 : — 

" All our reasonings about revelation are necessarily gathered 
by our natural notions about religion, and therefore he who sin- 
cerely desires to do the will of God is not apt to be imposed on by 
vain pretences of divine revelation ; but, if any doctrine be pro- 
posed to him which is pretended to come from God, he measures it 
by those sure and steady notions which he has of the divine nature 
and perfections. He will consider the nature and tendency of it, or 
whether it be a doctrine according to godliness, such as is agreeable 
to the divine nature and perfections, and tends to make us like 
unto God: if it be not, though an angel should bring it, he would 
not receive it." 

Rogers (John, D. D.), "Sermons at Boyle's Lec- 
ture," 1727, p. 59 : — 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 295 

" Our religion desires no other favor than a sober and dispas- 
sionate examination. It submits its grounds and reasons to an 
unprejudiced trial, and hopes to approve itself to the conviction of 
any equitable inquirer." 

Butler (Joseph, Bishop of Durham), "Analogy," 
&c., part 2, chap. 1 : — 

"Indeed, if in revelation there be found any passages, the seem- 
ing meaning of which is contrary to natural religion, we may most 
certainly conclude such seeming meaning not to be the real one." 
Ibid., chap. 8 : " I have argued upon the principles of the fatalists, 
which I do not believe ; and have omitted a thing of the utmost 
importance, which I do believe, — the moral fitness and unfitness 
of actions, prior to all will whatever, which I apprehend as cer- 
tainly to determine the divine conduct, as speculative truth and 
falsehood necessarily determine the divine judgment." 

To the same effect, the leading preacher among the 
Dissenters (James Foster), " Truth and Excellency of 
the Christian Revelation," 1731 : — 

" The faculty of reason which God hath implanted in mankind, 
however it may have been abused and neglected in times past, will, 
whenever they begin to exercise it aright, enable them to judge of 
all these things.' As by means of this they were capable of dis- 
covering at first the being and perfections of God, and that he 
governs the world with absolute wisdom, equity, and goodness, and 
what those duties are which they owe to him and to one another, 
they must be as capable, if they will divest themselves of preju- 
dice, and reason impartially, of rectifying any mistakes they may 
have fallen into about these important points. It matters not 
whether they have hitherto thought right or wrong, nor indeed 
whether they have thought at all : let them but begin to consider 
seriously, and examine carefully and impartially, and they must be 
able to find out all those truths, which, as reasonable creatures, 
they are capable of knowing, and which affect their duty and hap- 
piness." 

Finally, Warburton, displaying at once his disdain 
and his ignorance of catholic theology, affirms on his 
own authority (" Works," iii. p. 620), that " the image 
of God, in which man was at first created, lay in the 
faculty of reason only." 

But it is needless to multiply quotations. The 
received theology of the day taught on this point the 



296 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

doctrine of Locke, as clearly stated by himself (" Es- 
say," b. iv. chap. 19, § 4) : — 

" Reason is natural revelation, whereby the eternal Father of 
light, and fountain of all knowledge, communicates to mankind that 
portion of truth which he has laid within the reach of their natural 
faculties : revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of 
discoveries communicated by God immediately, which reason 
vouches the truth of, by the testimony and proofs it gives, that they 
come from God. So that he, that takes away reason to make way 
for revelation, puts out the light of both, and does much-what the 
same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes the better 
to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope." 

According to this assumption, a man's religions 
belief is a result which issues at the end of an intel- 
lectual process. In arranging the steps of this pro- 
cess, they conceived natural religion to form the first 
stage of the journey. That stage, theologians of all 
shades and parties travelled in company. It was only 
when they had reached the end of it that the Deists 
and the Christian apologists parted. The former found 
that the light of reason which had guided them so far 
indicated no road beyond. The Christian writers de- 
clared that the same natural powers enabled them to 
recognize the truth of revealed religion. The suffi- 
'ciency of natural religion thus became the turning- 
point of the dispute. The natural law of right and 
duty, argued the Deists, is so absolutely perfect, that 
God could not add anything to it. It is commensurate 
with all the real relations in which man stands. To 
suppose that God has created artificial relations, and 
laid upon man positive precepts, is to take away the 
very notion of morality. The moral law is nothing 
but the conditions of our actual being, apparent alike 
to those of the meanest and of the highest capacity. 
It is inconsistent with this to suppose that God has 
gone on to enact arbitrary statutes, and to declare 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 297 

them to man in an obscure and uncertain light. This 
was the ground taken by the great champion of Deism 
(Tindal), and expressed in the title of the treatise 
which he published in 1732, when upwards of seventy, 
" Christianity as Old as the Creation ; or, The Gospel 
a Republication of the Religion of Nature." This was 
the point which the Christian defenders labored most, 
to construct the bridge which should unite the re- 
vealed to the natural. They never demur to making 
the natural the basis on which the Christian rests, — 
to considering the natural knowledge of God as the 
starting-point both of the individual mind and of the 
human race. This assumption is necessary to their 
scheme, in which revelation is an argument addressed 
to the reason. Christianity is a resume of the knowl- 
edge of 'God already attained by reason, and a dis- 
closure of further truths. These further truths could 
not have been thought out by reason ; but, when di- 
vinely communicated, they approve themselves to the 
same reason which has already put us in possession of 
so much. The new truths are not of another order 
of ideas ; for " Christianity is a particular scheme un- 
der the general plan of Providence " (^Analogy ^ part 2, 
chap. 4), and the whole scheme is of a piece, and uni- 
form. " If the dispensation be indeed from God, all 
the parts of it will be seen to be the correspondent 
members of one entire whole ; which orderly disposi- 
tion of things essential to a religious system will assure 
us of the true theory of the Christian faith." (Warbur- 
ton, Divine Legation^ &c., b. ix. ; In trod. Works ^ vol. 
iii. p. 600.) " How these relations are made known, 
whether by reason or revelation, makes no alteration, 
in the case ; because the duties arise out of the rela- 
tions themselves, not out of the manner in which we- 
13* 



298 TENDENCIES OF KELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

are informed of them." (^Analog-?/, part 2, chap. 1.) 
" Those very articles of belief and duties of obedience 
which were formerly natural with respect to their 
manner of promulgation, are now, in the declaration 
of them, also supernatural." (Ferguson, Reason in Re- 
ligion, 1675, p. 29.) The relations to the Redeemer 
and the Sanctifier are not artificial, but as real as those 
to the Maker and Preserver ; and the obligations aris- 
ing out of the one set of relations as natural as those 
arising out of the other. 

The deference paid to natural religion is further 
seen in the attempts to establish a priori the necessity 
of a revelation. To make this out, it was requisite 
to show that the knowledge with which reason could 
supply us was inadequate to be the guide of life ; yet 
reason must not be too much depressed, inasmuch as 
it was needed for the proof of Christianity. On the 
one hand, the moral state of the Heathen world prior 
to the preaching of Christianity, and of Pagan and 
savage tribes in Africa and America now, the super- 
stitions of the most civilized nations of antiquity, the 
intellectual follies of the wisest philosophers, are exhib- 
ited in great detail. The usual arguments of scepti- 
cism on the conscious weakness of reason are brought 
forward, but not pushed very far. Reason is to be 
humiliated so far as that supernatural light shall be 
seen to be necessary ; but it must retain its competence 
to judge of the evidence of this supernatural message. 
Natural religion is insufficient as a light and a motive 
to show us our way, and to make us walk in it : it is 
sufficient as a light and a motive to lead us to revela- 
tion, and to induce us to embrace it. How much of 
religious truth was contained in natural knowledge, 
or how much was due to supernatural communication, 



IN ENGLAND, 1638-1750. 299 

was very variously estimated. Locke, especially, had 
warned against our liability to attribiite to reason 
much of moral truth that had, in fact, been derived 
from revelation. But the uncertainty of the demar- 
cation between the two is only additional proof of 
the identity of the scheme which they disclose be- 
tween them. The whole of God's government and 
dealings with man form one wide-spread and consist- 
ent scheme, of which natural reason apprehends a 
part, and of which Christianity was the manifestation 
of a further part. Consistently herewith, they treated 
natural religion, not as an historical dispensation, but 
as an abstract demonstration. There never was a 
time when mankind had realized or established an 
actual system of natural religion, but it lies always 
potentially in his reason. It held the same place as 
the social contract in political history. The " original 
contract " had never had historical existence, but it 
was a hypothesis necessary to explain the existing 
fact of society. No society had, in fact, arisen on 
that basis ; yet it is the theoretical basis on which all 
society can be shown to rest. So there was no time 
or country where the religion of nature had been 
fully known ; yet the natural knowledge of God is the 
only foundation in the human mind on which can be 
built a rational Christianity. Though not an original 
condition of any part of mankind, it is an ever-origi- 
nating condition of every human mind, as soon as it 
begins to reason on the facts of religion, rendering all 
the moral phenomena available for the construction 
of a scientific theory of religion. 

In accordance with this view, they interpreted the 
passages in St. Paul which speak of the religion 
of the Heathen ; e. g. Rom. ii. 14. Since the time of 



300 TENDENCIES OF KELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

Augustine (" De Spir. et Lit.," § 27), the orthodox 
interpretation had appUcd this verse, either to the 
Gentile converts, or to the favored few among the 
Heathen who had extraordinary divine assistance. 
The Protestant expositors, to whom the words, " do 
by nature the things contained in the law," could 
never bear their literal force, sedulously preserved 
the Augustinian explanation. Even the Pelagian 
Jeremy Taylor is obliged to gloss the phrase, " by 
nature," thus : " By fears and secret opinions which 
the Spirit of God, who is never wanting to men in 
things necessary, was pleased to put into the hearts 
of men." {Duct. Dubit., b. ii. chap. 1, § 3.) The Ra- 
tionalists, however, find the expression " by nature," 
in its literal sense, exactly conformable to their own 
views (Wilkins, " Of Nat. Rel.," ii. c. 9) ; and have no 
difficulty even in supposing the acceptableness of 
these works, and the salvability of those who do them. 
Burnet, on Art. xviii., in his usual confused style of 
eclecticism, suggests both opinions, without seeming 
to see that they are incompatible relics of divergent 
schools of doctrine. 

Consequent with such a theory of rehgion was 
tlieir notion of its practical bearings. Christianity 
was a republication of the moral law, — a republica- 
tion rendered necessary by the helpless state of moral 
debasement into which the world was come by the 
practice of vice. The experience of ages had proved, 
that though our duty might be discoverable by the 
light of nature, yet virtue was not able to maintain 
itself in the world without additional sanctions. The 
disinterestedness of virtue was here a pomt much 
debated. The Deists, in general, argued from the 
notion of morality, that so far as any private regard 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 301 

to my own interest, whether present or future, influ- 
enced my conduct, so far my actions had no moral 
worth. From this they drew the inference, that the 
rewards and punishments of Christianity — these ad- 
ditional sanctions — could not be a divine ordinance, 
inasmuch as they were subversive of morality. The 
orthodox writers had to maintain the theory of re- 
wards and punishments in such a way as not to be 
inconsistent with the theory of the disinterestedness 
of virtue, which they had made part of their theol- 
ogy. Even here no precise line can be drawn be- 
tween the Deistical and the Christian moralists : for 
we find Shaftesbury placing in a very clear light the 
mode in which religious sanctions do, in fact, as soci- 
ety is constituted, support and strengthen virtue in the 
world ; though he does not deny that the principle of 
virtue in the individual may suffer from the selfish 
passion being appealed to by the hope of reward or 
the fear of punishment. ( Ckaracteristicks, vol. ii. p. Q6.^ 
But, with whatever variation in individual disputants, 
the tone of the discussion is unmistakable. When 
Collins was asked why he was careful to make his 
servants go to church, he is said to have answered, 
"I do it that they may neither rob nor murder me." 
This is but an exaggerated form of the practical re- 
ligion of the age. Tillotson's sermon (" Works," voL 
iii. p. 43) " On the Advantages of Religion to Soci- 
eties" is like Collins's reply at fuller length. The 
Deists and their opponents alike assume that the pur- 
pose of the supernatural interference of the Deity in 
revelation must have been to secure the good behav- 
ior of man in this world ; that the future life and 
our knowledge of it, may be a means to this great 
end ; that the next world, if it exist at all, bears that 



302 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

relation to the present. We are chiefly famihar with 
these views from their having been long the butt of 
the Evangelical pulpit, a chief topic in which was to 
decry the mere " legal " preaching of a preceding age. 
To abstain fi'om vice, to cultivate virtue, to fill our sta- 
tion in life with propriety, to bear the ills of life with 
resignation, and to use its pleasures moderately, — 
these things are, indeed, not little : perhaps no one can 
name in his circle of friends a man whom he thinks 
equal to these demands. Yet the experience of the 
last age has shown us unmistakably, that where this 
is our best ideal of life, whether, with the Deists, we 
establish the obligation of morality on " independent " 
grounds ; or, with the orthodox, add the religious 
sanction, — in Mr. Mill's rather startling mode of put- 
ting it ("Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 436), "Because 
God is stronger than we, and able to damn us if we 
don't," — it argues a sleek and sordid epicurism, in 
which religion and a good conscience have their place 
among the means by which life is to be made comfort- 
able. To accuse the divines of this age of a leaning 
to Arminianism is quite beside the mark. They did 
not intend to be other than orthodox. They did not 
take the i\Tminian side rather than the Calvinistic in 
the old conflict or concordat between faith and works, 
between justification and sanctification. They had 
dropped the terminology, and with it the mode of 
thinking, which the terms implied. They had adopted 
the language and ideas of the moralists. They spoke 
not of sin, but of vice ; and of virtue, not of works. In 
the old Protestant theology, actions had only a certain 
exterior relation to the justified man : " Gute fromme 
Werke machen nimmermehr einen guten frommen 
Mann, sondern ein guter frommer Mann macht gute 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 303 

Werke." (^Luther.') Now, our conduct was thought 
of, not as a product or efflux of our character, but as 
regulated by our understanding ; by a perception of 
relations, or a calculation of consequences. This intel- 
lectual perception of regulative truth is religious faith. 
Faith is no longer the devout condition of the entire 
inner man. Its dynamic nature and interior working 
are not denied, but they are unknown ; and religion 
is made to regulate life from without, through the log- 
ical proof of the being and attributes of God, upon 
which an obligation to obey him can be raised. 

The preachers of any period are not to be censured 
for adapting their style of address and mode of argu- 
ing to their hearers. They are as necessarily bound 
to the preconceived notions as to the language of 
those whom they have to exhort. The pulpit does 
not mould the forms into which religious thought in 
any age runs : it simply accommodates itself to those 
that exist. For this very reason, because they must 
follow and cannot lead, sermons are the surest index 
of the prevailing religious feeling of their age. Wlien 
we are reminded of the powerful influence of the 
pulpit at the Reformation, in the time of the Long 
Parliament, or at the Methodist revival, it must also 
be remembered that these preachers addressed a dif- 
ferent class of society from that for which our clas- 
sical pulpit oratory was written. If it could be said 
that " Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain," it 
was because the populace were gone to hear mad Hen- 
ley on his tub. To charge Tillotson or Foster with 
not moving the masses which Whitefield moved, is to 
charge them with not having preached to another 
congregation than that to which they had to preach. 
Nor did they preach to empty pews, though their 



804 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

carefully written " discourses " could never produce 
effects such as are recorded of Burnet's extempore 
addresses, when he " was often interrupted by the 
deep hum of his audience ; and when, after preaching 
out the hour-glass, he held it up in his hand, the con- 
gregation clamorously encouraged him to go on till 
the sand had run off once more." (^Macaulaj/, vol. ii. 
p. 177.) The dramatic oratory of Whitefield could 
not have sustained its power over the same auditors : 
he had a fresh congregation every Sunday. And, in 
the judgment of one quite disposed to do justice to 
Whitefield, there is nothing in his sermons such as 
are printed. Johnson (ap. Bosivell), speaking of the 
comparisons drawn between the preaching in the 
Church and that of the Methodists, to the disadvan- 
tage of the former, says, " I never treated Whitefield's 
ministry with contempt : I believe he did good. But, 
when familiarity and noise claim the praise due to 
knowledge, art, and elegance, we must beat down 
such pretensions." It is, however, the substance, 
and not the manner, of the classical sermons of the 
eighteenth century, which is meant, when they are 
complained of as cold and barren. From this accusa- 
tion they cannot be vindicated. But let it be rightly 
understood, that it is a charge, not against the preach- 
ers, but against the religious ideas, of the period. In 
the pulpit, the speaker has no choice but to take his 
audience as he finds them. He can but draw them 
on to the conclusions already involved in their prem- 
ises. He cannot supply them with a new set of prin- 
ciples, and alter their fixed forms of thought. The 
ideas out of which the Protestant or the Puritan move- 
ment proceeded were generated elsewhere than in the 
pulpit. 



IN ENGLAXD, 1688-1750. 305 

The Rationalist preachers of the eighteenth century- 
are usually contrasted with the Evangelical pulpit 
which displaced them. Mr. Neale has compared them 
disadvantageously with the mediaeval preachers in 
respect of Scripture knowledge. He selects a sermon 
of the eighteenth and one of the twelfth century ; the 
one by the well-known Evangelical preacher John 
Newton, Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth ; the other by 
Guarric, Abbot of Igniac. " In Newton's sermon we 
find nine references to the Gospels, two to the 
Epistles, nine to the Prophets, one to the Psalms, and 
none to any other part of Scripture. In the sermon 
of Guarric we find seven references to the Gospels, 
one to the Epistles, twenty-two to the Psalms, nine to 
the Prophets, and eighteen to other parts of Scrip- 
ture. Thus the total number of quotations made by 
the Evangelical preacher is twenty-one ; by Guarric, 
fifty-seven ; and this in sermons of about equal length." 
(^MedicBval Preachings Introd. xxvi.) Mr. Neale has, 
perhaps, not been fortunate in his selection of a speci- 
men sermon ; for, having the curiosity to apply this 
childish test to a sermon of John Blair, taken at 
random out of his four volumes, I found the number 
of texts quoted thirty-seven. But, passing this by, 
Mr. Neale misses his inference. He means to show 
how much more Scripture knowledge was possessed 
by the preachers of the " dark ages." This is very 
likely, if familiarity with the mere words of the Yul- 
gate version be Scripture knowledge ; but it is not 
proved by the abstinence of the eighteenth-century 
preacher from the use of biblical phraseology. The 
fact, so far as it is one, only shows that our divines 
understood Scripture differently, some will say better, 
than the middle-age ecclesiastic. The latter had, in 



306 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

the mystical theology of the Christian Church, a rich 
store of religious sentiment, which it was an exercise 
of their ingenuity to find in the poetical books of the 
Hebrew canon. Great part of this fanciful allegoriz- 
ing is lost, apart from the Yulgate translation. But 
of this the more learned of them were quite aware ; 
and on their theory of Scripture interpretation, 
according to which the Church was its guaranteed 
expositor, the verbal meanings of the Latin version 
were equally the inspired sense of the sacred record. 
It was otherwise w^ith the English divine of the 
eighteenth century. According to the then received 
view of Scripture, its meaning was not assigned 
by the Church, but its language was interpreted by 
criticism ; i. e. by reason. Tlie aids of history, the 
ordinary rules of grammar and logic, were applied to 
find out what the sacred writers actually said. That 
was the meaning of Scripture, the message super- 
naturally communicated. Where each text of Scrip- 
ture has but one sense, that sense in which the 
writer penned it, it can only be cited in that sense 
without doing it violence. This was the turn by 
which Selden so discomfited the Puritan divines, who, 
like the Catholic mystics, made Scripture words the 
vehicle of their own feelings. " Perhaps in your little 
pocket Bibles with gilt leaves the translation may be 
thus ; but the Greek or Hebrew signifies otherwise." 
(Wliitelocke, Johnson's Life of Selden,' ip. 303.) If 
the preacher in the eighteenth century had allowed 
himself to make these allusions, the taste of his 
audience would have rejected them. He would have 
weakened his argument instead of giving it effect. 

No quality of these " Discourses " strikes us more 
now than the good sense which pervades them. 



IN ENGLAND, 16S8-1750. 307 

They are the complete reaction against the Puritan 
sermon of the seventeenth century. We have noth- 
ing far-fetched, fanciful, allegoric. The practice of our 
duty is recommended to us on the most undeniable 
grounds of prudence. Barrow had indulged in ambi- 
tious periods, and South had been jocular. Neither 
of these faults can be alleged against the model ser- 
mon of the Hanoverian period. No topic is produced 
which does not compel our assent as soon as it is un- 
derstood, and none is there which is not understood 
as soon as uttered. It is one man of the world speak- 
ing to another. Collins said of St. Paul, " that he 
had a great respect for him as both a man of sense and 
a gentleman." He might have said the same of the 
best pulpit divines of his own time. They bear the 
closest resemblance to each other, because they all use 
the language of fashionable society, and say exactly 
the proper thing. " A person," says Waterland, " must 
have some knowledge of men, besides that of books, 
to succeed well here ; and must have a kind of prac- 
tical sagacity, which nothing but the grace of God, 
joined with recollection and wise observation, can 
bring, to be able to represent truths to the life, or to 
any considerable degree of advantage." This is from 
his recommendatory preface prefixed to an edition of 
Blair's Sermons (1739) ; not the Presbyterian Dr. 
Hugh Blair, but John Blair, the founder and first 
President of a Missionary College in Virginia, whose 
" Sermons on the Beatitudes " were among the most 
approved models of the day, and recommended by the 
bishops to their candidates for orders. Dr. Hugh 
Blair's Sermons, which Johnson thought " excellently 
written, both as to doctrine and language " (ap. Bos- 
well, p. 528), are in a different taste, — that of the lat- 



808 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

ter half of the century, when soHd and sensible rea- 
soning was superseded by polished periods and flowery 
rhetoric. " Polished as marble," says Hugh J. Rose, 
"but also as lifeless and as cold." The sermons 
which Waterland recommends to young students of 
divinity comprise Tillotson, Sharp, Calamy, Sprat, 
Blackball, Hoadly, South, Claggett, and Atterbury. 
Of these, " Sharp's, Calamy's, and Blackhairs are the 
best models for an easy, natural, and familiar way of 
writing. Sprat is fine, florid, and elaborate in his 
style, artful in his method, and not so open as the 
former, but harder to be imitated. Hoadly is very 
exact and judicious, and both his sense and style just, 
close, and clear. The others are very sound, clear 
writers ; only Scot is too swelling and pompous, and 
South is something too full of wit and satire, and does 
not always observe a decorum in his style." He 
advises the student to begin his divinity course with 
reading sermons, because " they are the easiest, plain- 
est, and most entertaining of any books of divinity ; 
and might be digested into a better body of divinity 
than any that is yet extant." (^Advice to a Young- 
Student, 1730.) 

Not only the pulpit, but the whole theological lit- 
erature of the age, takes the same tone of appeal. 
Books are no longer addressed by the cloistered aca- 
demic to a learnedly educated class : they are written 
by popular divines — "men of leisure," Butler calls 
them — for the use of fashionable society. There is 
an epoch in the history of letters, when readers and 
writers change places ; when it ceases to be the read- 
er's business to come to the writer to be instructed, 
and the writer begins to endeavor to engage the at- 
tention of the reader. The same necessity was now 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 309 

laid upon the religious writer. He appeared at the 
bar of criticism, and must gain the wits and the town. 
At the debate between tlie Deists and the Christian 
apologists, the public was umpire. The time was past 
when Baxter " talked about another world like one 
that had been there, and was come as a sort of express 
from thence to make a report concerning it." (Calamy, 
Life, i. 220.) As the preacher now no longer spake 
with the authority of a heavenly mission, but laid the 
state of the argument before his hearers ; so philos- 
ophy was no longer a self-centred speculation, an 
oracle of wisdom. The divine went out into the 
streets, with his demonstration of the being and attri- 
butes of God printed on a broadside : he solicits your 
assent in '' the new court-jargon." When Collins visit- 
ed Lord Barrington at Tofts, " as they were all men 
of letters, and had a taste for Scripture criticism, it is 
said to have been their custom, after dinner, to have 
a Greek Testament laid on the table." QBiog. Brit., art. 
"- Barrington.") These discussions were not necessari- 
ly unprofitable. Lord Bolingbroke " was seldom in the 
compan}^ of the Countess of Huntingdon without dis- 
cussing some topic beneficial to his eternal inte|gsts, 
and he always paid the utmost respect and deference 
to her ladyship's opinion." (^Memoirs of Countess of 
Hunt., i. 180.) Bishop Butler gives his clergy hints 
how to conduct themselves when '' sceptical and pro- 
fane men bring up the subject (religion) at meetings 
of entertainment, and such as are of the freer sort : 
innocent ones, I mean ; otherwise I should not suppose 
you would be present at them." (^Durham Charge, 
1751.) Tindal's reconversion from Romanism is said 
to have been brought about by the arguments he 
heard in the coffee-houses. This anecdote, given m 



310 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

Curll's catchpenny ^' Life," rests, not on that book- 
seller's authority, which is worthless, but on that of 
the medical man who attended him in his last illness. 
It was the same with the controversy on the Trinity ; 
of which Waterland says, in 1723, that it was " spread 
abroad among all ranks and degrees of men, and the 
Athanasian Creed become the subject of common and 
ordinary conversation." (^Critical Hist, of the Athan. 
Creed., Introd.) The universities were invaded by 
the spirit of the age, and instead of taking students 
through a laborious course of philosophy, natural and 
moral, turned out accomplished gentlemen upon " the 
classics," and a scantling of logic. Berkeley's ironical 
portrait of the modish philosopher is of date 1732 : — 

" Lysicles smiled, and said he believed Eupliranor had figured to 
hlmseh' philosophers in square caps and long gowns ; but, thanks 
to these happy times, the reign of pedantry was over. Our philoso- 
phers are ot' a very different kind from those awkward students 
who think to come at knowledge by poring on dead languages and 
old authors, or by secjuestering themselves from the cares of the 
world to meditate in solitude and retirement. They are the best 
bred men of the age, — men who know the world, men of pleas- 
ure, men of fashion, and fine gentlemen. — Euph. : I have some 
small notion of the people you mention, but should never have 
taken them for philosophers. — Cri : Nor would any one else till 
of late. The world was long under a mistake about the way to 
knowledge, thinking it lay through a tedious course of academical 
education and study. But, among the discoveries of the present 
age, one of the principal is the finding-out that such a method doth 
rather retard and obstruct than promote knowledge. — Lys. : I 
will undertake, a lad of fourteen, bred in the modern way, shall 
make a better figure, and be more considered in any drawing- 
room, or assembly of polite people, than one at four and twenty 
who hath lain by a long time at school and college. He shall say 
better things, in a better manner, and be more liked by good 
judges. — Euph. : Where doth he pick up this improvement ? — Cri. : 
Where our grave ancestors would never have looked for it, — in a 
drawing-room, a coffee-house, a chocolate-late-house, at the tavern, 
or groom-porter's. In these and the like fashionable places of re- 
sort, it is the custom for polite persons to speak freely on all 
subjects, — religious, moral, or political ; so that a young gentleman 
who frequents them is in the way of hearing many instructive 
lectures, seasoned with wit and raillery, and uttered with spirit. 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 311 

Three or four sentences from a man of quality, spoken with a 
good air, make more impression, and convey more knowledge, 
than a dozen dissertations in a dry academical way. . . . You 
may now commonly see a young lady or a j^etit maitre nonplus 
a divine or an old-fashioned gentleman, who hath read many a 
Greek and Latin author, and spent much time in hard methodical 
study." — Alciphron, Dial. i. § 11. 



Among a host of mischiefs thus arising, one pos- 
itive good may be signalized. If there must be debate, 
there ought to be fair play ; and, of this, pubhcity is 
the best guaranty. To make the pubhc arbiter in an 
abstract question of metaphysics is doubtless absurd ; 
yet it is at least a safeguard against extravagance and 
metaphysical lunacy. The verdict of public opinion 
on such topics is worthless : but it checks the inevi- 
table tendency of closet speculation to become vision- 
ary. There is but one sort of scepticism that is 
genuine, and deadly in proportion as it is real ; that, 
namely, which is forced upon the mind by its experi- 
ence of the hollowness of mankind : for " men may 
be read, as well as books, too much." That other 
logical scepticism which is hatched by over-thinking 
can be cured by an easy remedy, — ceasing to think. 

The objections urged against revelation in the 
course of the Deistical controversy were no chimeras 
of a sickly brain, but solid charges : the points brought 
into public discussion were the points at which the 
revealed system itself impinges on human reason. 
No time can lessen whatever force there may be in 
the objection against a miracle : it is felt as strongly 
in one century as in another. The debate was not 
frivolous : the objections were worth answering, be- 
cause they were not pitched metaphysically high. To 
a Platonizing divine they looked trivial, — picked up 
in the street. So Origen naturally thought " that a 



312 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

faith which could be shaken by such objections as 
those of Celsus was not worth much.'* (^Cont. Cels., 
Pref. § 4.) Just such were the objections of the De- 
ists, — such as come spontaneously into the thoughts 
of practical men, who never think systematically, but 
who are not to be imposed upon by fancies. Persons 
sneer at the " shallow Deism " of the last century ; 
and it is customary to reply, that the antagonist 
orthodoxy was at least as shallow. The truth is, the 
*' shallowness " imputed belongs to the mental sphere 
into which the debate was for the time transported. 
The philosophy of the age was not above its mission. 
"Philosophy," thought Thomas Reid, in 1764, " has 
no other root but the principles of common sense ; it 
grows out of them, it draws its nourishment from 
them : severed from this root, its honors wither, 
its sap is dried up, it dies and rots." (^Inquiry, &c., 
Intr. § 4.) We in the present generation have seen 
the great speculative movement in Germany die out 
from this very cause, because it became divorced from 
the facts on whicli it speculated. Shut up in the 
universities, it turned inwards on itself, and preyed 
on its own vitals. It has only been neglected by the 
world because it first neglected the great facts in 
which the world has and feels an interest. 

If ever there was a time when abstract speculation 
was brought down from inaccessible heights and com- 
pelled to be intelligible, it was the period from the 
Revolution to the middle of the last century. Closet 
speculation had been discredited ; the cobwebs of 
scholasticism were exploded ; the age of feverish 
doubt and egotistical introspection had not arrived. 
In that age, the English higher education acquired its 
practical aim, — an aim in which the development of 



IN ENGLAND, 1683-1750. 313 

the understanding and the acquisition of knowledge 
are considered secondary objects to the formation of 
a sound secular judgment, of the " scholar and the 
gentleman " of the old race of schoolmasters. Burke, 
contrasting his own times with the preceding age, 
" considered our forefathers as deeper thinkers than 
ourselves, because they set a higher value on good 
sense than on knowledge in various sciences ; and their 
good sense was derived very often from as much study 
and more knowledge, though of another sort." (^Rec- 
ollections hy Samuel Rogers, p. 81.) 

When a dispute is joined, e. g., on the origin and 
composition of the G-ospels, it is, from the nature of 
the case, confined to an inner circle of biblical scholars. 
The mass of the public must wait outside, and receive 
the result on their authority. The religious pubUc 
were very reluctant to resign the verse, 1 John v. 7 ; 
but they did so at last on the just ground, that after a 
philological controversy, conducted with open doors, 
it had been decided to be spurious. No serious man 
would consider a popular assembly a proper court to 
decide on the doctrine of transubstantiation, or on the 
Hegelian definition of God ; though either is easily 
capable of being held up to the ridicule of the half- 
educated from the platform or the pulpit. It is other- 
wise with the greater part of the points raised in the 
Deistical controversy. It is not the speculative reason 
of the few, but the natural conscience of the many, 
.that questions the extirpation of the Canaanites, or 
the eternity of hell-torments. These are points of 
divinity that are at once fundamental and popular. 
Butler, though not approving " of entering into an 
argumentative defence of religion in common conver- 
sation," recommends his clergy to do so from the pul- 
14 



314 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

pit, on the ground that " such as are capable of seeing 
the force of objections, are capable also of seeing the 
force of the answers which are given to them." (^Dur- 
ham Charge.') If the philosophic intellect be dissatis- 
fied with the answers which the divines of that day 
gave to the difficulties started, let it show how, on the 
Rationalist hypothesis, these difficulties are removable 
for the mass of those who feel them. The transcen- 
dental reason provides an answer which possibly satis- 
fies itself; but to the common reason the answer is 
more perplexing than the difficulty it would clear. 

M. Yillemain has remarked in Pascal " that fore- 
sight which revealed to him so many objections un- 
known to his generation, and which inspired him with 
the idea of fortifying and intrenching positions which 
were not threatened." The objections which Pascal is 
engaged with are not only not those of his age : they 
are not such as could ever become general in any age. 
They are those of the higher reason, and the replies 
are from the same inspiration. Pascal's view of hu- 
man depravity seems to the ordinary man but the 
despair and delirium of the self-tormenting ascetic. 
The cynical view of our fallen nature, however, is at 
least a possible view. It is well that it should be ex- 
plored ; and it will always have its prophets, Calvin or 
Rochefoucauld. But, to ordinary men, an argument 
in favor of revelation, founded on such an assump- 
tion, will seem to be in contradiction to his daily expe- 
rience. Pascal's " Pens<^es " stand alone ; a work of 
individual genius, not belonging to any age. The 
celebrity which the " Analogy " of Bishop Butler has 
gained is due to the opposite reason. It is no para- 
dox to say that the merit of the *' Analogy " lies in its 
want of originahty. It came (1736) towards the end 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 315 

of the Deistical period. It is the result of twenty 
years' study, — the very twenty years during which 
the Deistical notions formed the atmosphere which 
educated people breathed. The objections it meets are 
not new and unseasoned objections, but such as had 
worn well, and had borne the rub of controversy, be- 
cause they were genuine. And it will be equally hard 
to find in the " Analogy " any topic in reply which had 
not been suggested in the pamphlets and sermons of 
the preceding half-century. Like Aristotle's physical 
and political treatises, it is a resume of the discus- 
sions of more than one generation. Its admirable 
arrangement only is all its own. Its closely packed 
and carefully fitted order speaks of many year's con- 
trivance. Its substance are the thoughts of a whole 
age, not barely compiled, but each reconsidered and 
digested. Every brick in the building has been rung 
before it has been relaid, and replaced in its true re- 
lation to the complex and various whole. In more 
than one passage, we see that the construction of this 
fabric of evidence, which " consists in a long series of 
things, one preparatory to and confirming another 
from the beginning of the world to the present time," 
(^Durham Charg-e,^ was what occupied Butler's atten- 
tion. " Compass of thought, even amongst persons of 
the lowest rank," QPref. to Sermons ^^ is that form of 
the reflective faculty to which he is fond of looking 
both for good and evil. He never will forget that 
"justice must be done to every part of a subject, when 
we are considering it." QSermon iv.) Harmony and 
law and order he will suppose, even where he does 
not find. The tendency of his reason was that which 
Bacon indicates : " The spirit of a man, being of an 
equal and uniform substance, doth usually suppose and 



316 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

feign in nature a greater equality and uniformity than 
is in truth." (^Advancement of Learning'.^ This is 
probably the true explanation of the " obscurity " which 
persons sometimes complain of in Butler's style. The 
reason or matter he is producing is palpable and plain 
enough ; but he is so solicitous to find its due place 
in the then stage of the argument, so scrupulous to 
give it its exact weight and no more, so careful in ar- 
ranging its situation relatively to the other members 
of the proof, that a reader, who does not bear in mind 
that " the effect of the whole " is what the architect is 
preparing, is apt to become embarrassed, and to think 
that obscurity which is really logical precision. The 
generality of men are better qualified for understand- 
ing particulars one by one, than for taking a compre- 
hensive view of the whole. The philosophical breadth 
which we miss in Butler's mode of conceiving is com- 
pensated for by this judicial breadth in his mode of 
arguing, which gives its place to each consideration, 
but regards rather the cumulative force of the whole. 
Many writers before Butler had insisted on this char- 
acter of the Christian evidences. Dr. Jenkin, Mar- 
garet Professor at Cambridge, whose " Reasonableness 
and Certainty of the Christian Religion " was the 
" Paley " of divinity students then, says, " There is an 
excellency in every part of our religion, separately 
considered: but the strength and vigor of each part 
is in the relation it has to the rest ; and the several 
parts must be taken altogether, if we would have a 
true knowledge and make a just estimate of the whole." 
(^Reasonableness, &c., part ii. Pref. 1721.) But But- 
ler does not merely take the hint from others : it is 
so entirely the guiding rule of his hand and pen, that 
it would appear to have been forced upon him by 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 317 

some peculiar experience of his own. It was in soci- 
ety, and not in his study, that he had learned the 
weight of the Deistical arguments. At the Queen's 
philosophical parties, where these topics were can- 
vassed with earnestness and freedom, he must have 
often felt the impotence of reply in detail, and seen, 
as he says, " How impossible it must be, in a cursory 
conversation, to unite all this into one argument, and 
represent it as it ought." (^Durham Charge.') Hence 
his own labor to work up his materials into a con- 
nected framework, — a methodized encyclopsedia of 
all the extant topics. 

Not that he did not pay attention to the parts. 
Butler's eminence over his contemporary apologists 
is seen in nothing more than in that superior sagacity 
which rejects the use of any plea that is not entitled 
to consideration singly. In the other evidential books 
of the time, we find a miscellaneous crowd of sugges- 
tions of very various value ; never fanciful, but often 
trivial ; undeniable, but weak as proof of the point 
they are brought to prove. Butler seems as if he had 
sifted these books, and retained all that was solid in 
them. K he built with brick, and not with marble, 
it was because he was not thinking of reputation, but 
of utility and an immediate purpose. Mackintosh 
wished Butler had had the elegance and ornament of 
Berkeley. They would have been sadly out of place. 
There was not a spark of the littleness of literary am- 
bition about him. " There was a certain naturalness 
in Butler's mind, which took him straight to the ques- 
tions on which men differed around him. Generally, 
it is safer to prove what no one denies, and easier 
to explain difiiculties which no one has ever felt. A 
quiet reputation is best obtained in the literary quces- 



318 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

tiiinculce of important subjects. But a simple and 
straightforward man studies great topics because he 
feels a want of the knowledge which they contain. 
He goes straight to the real doubts and fundamental 
discrepancies, — to those on which it is easy to excite 
odium, and difficult to give satisfaction : he leaves to 
others the amusing, skirmishing, and superficial litera- 
ture accessory to such studies. Thus there is nothing 
light in Butler : all is grave, serious, and essential ; 
nothing else would be characteristic of him." (Bage- 
hot, Estimates^ (Src, p. 189.) Though he has rifled their 
books, he makes no display of reading. In the " Anal- 
ogy," he never names the author he is answering. 
In the " Sermons," he quotes directly only Hobbes, 
Shaftesbury, Wollaston, Rouchefoucauld, and Fenelon. 
From his writings, we should infer that his reading 
was not promiscuous, even had he not himself given 
us to understand how much opportunity he had of 
seeing the idleness and waste of time occasioned by 
light reading. (^Sermons, Pref.) 

This popular appeal to the common reason of men, 
which is one characteristic of the Rationalist period, 
was a first effort of English theology to find a new 
basis for doctrine which should replace those foun- 
dations which had failed it. The Reformation had 
destroyed the authority of the Church upon which 
revelation had so long rested. The attempt of the 
Laudian divines to substitute the voice of the national 
Church for that of the Church universal had met with 
only very partial and temporary success. When the 
Revolution of 1688 introduced the freedom of the press 
and a general toleration, even that artificial authority, 
which, by ignoring nonconformity, had produced an 
appearance of unity, and erected a conventional stand- 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 319 

ard of truth and falsehood, fell to the ground. The 
old and venerated authority had been broken by the 
Reformation. The new authority of the Anglican 
establishment had existed in theory only, and never 
in fact ; and the Revolution had crushed the theory, 
which was now confined to a small band of non-jurors. 
In reaction against Anglican " authority," the Puritan 
movement had tended to rest faith and doctrine upon 
the inward light within each man's breast. This 
tendency of the neiu Puritanism, which we may call 
Independency, was a development of the old^ purely 
scriptural, Puritanism of Presbyterianism. But it was 
its natural and necessary development. It was a con- 
sequence of the controversy with the establishment ; 
for both the Church and Dissent agreed in acknowl- 
edging Scripture as their foundation, and the contro- 
versy turned on the interpreter of Scripture. Nor 
was the doctrine of the inner light which individual- 
ized the basis of faith confined to the Nonconformists : 
it was shared by a section of the Church, of whom 
Cudworth is the type ; to whom " Scripture faith is 
not a mere believing of historical things, and upon 
artificial arguments or testimonies only, but a certain 
higher and diviner power in the soul that peculiarly 
correspondeth with the Deity." ^Intellectual System, 
Pref.) The inner light, or witness of the Spirit in 
the soul of the individual believer, had, in its turn, 
fallen into discredit through the extravagances to 
which it had given birth. It was disowned alike by 
Churchmen and Nonconformists, who agree in speak- 
ing with contemptuous pity of the " sectaries of the last 
age." The reaction against individual religion led to 
this first attempt to base revealed truth on reason ; 
and, for the purpose for which reason was now wanted, 



820 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

the higher or philosophic reason was far less fitted 
than that universal understanding in which all men 
can claim a share. The " inner light," which had made 
each man the dictator of liis own creed, had exploded 
in ecclesiastical anarchy. The appeal from the frantic 
discord of the enthusiasts to reason must needs be, 
not to an arbitrary or particular reason in each man, 
but to a common sense, a natural discernment, a reason 
of universal obligation. As it was to be universally 
binding, it must be generally recognizable. It must 
be something not confined to the select few, a gift of 
the self-styled elect, but a faculty belonging to all men 
of sound mind and average capacity. Truth must be 
accessible to '' the bulk of mankhid." It was a time 
when the only refuge from the hopeless maze or wild 
chaos seemed to be the rational consent of the sen- 
sible and unprejudiced. " Have the bulk of mankind," 
writes Locke, " no other guide but accident and blind 
chance to conduct them to their happiness or misery ? 
Are the current opinions and licensed guides of every 
country sufficient evidence and security to every man 
to venture his great concernments on ? Or can those 
be the certain and infallible oracles and standards 
of truth which teach one thing in Christendom, and 
another in Turkey ? Or shall a poor countryman be 
eternally happy for having the chance to be born in 
Italy ? or a day-laborer be unavoidably lost because 
he had the ill-luck to be born in England ? How ready 
some men may be to say some of these things, I will 
not here examine ; but this I am sure, that men must 
allow one or other of these to be true, or else grant 
that God has furnished men with faculties sufficient to 
direct them in the way they should take, if they will 
but seriously employ them that way, when their ordi- 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 321 

nary vocations allow them tlie leisure." QEssay^ book 
iv. chap. 19, § 3.) 

Such an attempt to secure a foundation in a new 
consensus will obviously forfeit depth to gain in com- 
prehensiveness. This phase of Rationalism — Ration- 
alismus vulgaris — resigns the transcendental that it 
may gain adherents. It wants, not the elect, but all 
men. It cannot afford to embarrass itself with the 
attempt to prove what all may not be required to re- 
ceive. Accordingly, there can be no mysteries in 
Christianity. The word fiuarripLov, as Archbishop 
Whately points out, (" Essays," 2d series, 5tli ed., 
p. 288,) always means in the New Testament, not 
that which is incomprehensible, but that which was 
once a secret ; though, now it is revealed, it is no 
longer so. Whately, who elsewhere (Paley's " Evi- 
dences," new edition) speaks so contemptuously of the 
" cast-off clothes of the Deists, is here but adopting the 
argument of Toland in his " Christianity not Myste- 
rious." (Cf. Balguy, Discourses, p. 237.) There 
needs no special " preparation of heart " to receive the 
gospel : the evidences of religion are sufficient to con- 
vince every unprejudiced inquirer. Unbelievers are 
blameworthy as deaf to an argument which is so plain 
that they cannot but understand it, and so convincing 
that they cannot but be aware of its force. Under 
such self-imposed conditions, religious proof seems to 
divest itself of all that is divine, and, out of an excess 
of accommodation to the recipient faculty, to cease to 
be a transforming thought. Rationalism can object 
to the old sacramental system, that it degrades a spir- 
itual influence into a physical effect. But Rational- 
ism itself, in order to make the proof of revelation 
universal, is obliged to resolve religion into the moral 
■ 14* u 



322 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

gOTernment of God by rewards and punishments, and 
especially the latter. It is this anthropomorphic con- 
ception of God as the " Governor of the universe " 
which is presented to us in the theology of the Hano- 
verian divuies, — a theology which excludes on prin- 
ciple not only all that is poetical in life, but all that is 
sublime in religious speculation. " To degrade relig- 
ion to the position of a mere purveyor of motive to 
morality, is not more dishonorable to the ethics which 
must ask than to the religion which will render such 
assistance." (A. J. Yaughan, Essays^ vol. i. p. 61.) 
It is this character that makes the reading even of the 
" Analogy " so depressing to the soul ; as Tholuck 
(" Yermischte Schriften," i. 193) says of it, " We 
weary of a long journey on foot, especially through 
deep sand." Human nature is not only humbled, but 
crushed. It is a common charge against the eigh- 
teenth-century divines, that they exalt man too much 
by insisting on the dignity of human nature, and its 
native capacities for virtue. This was the charge 
urged against the orthodox by the Evangelical pulpit. 
But only very superficial and incompetent critics of 
doctrine can suppose that man is exalted by being 
thrown upon his moral faculties. The history of doc- 
trine teaches a very different lesson. Those periods 
when morals have been represented as the proper 
study of man, and his only business, have been pe- 
riods of spiritual abasement and poverty. The denial 
of scientific theology, the keeping in the background 
the transcendental objects of faith, and the restriction 
of our faculties to the regulation of our conduct, 
seem, indeed, to be placing man in the foreground of 
the picture, — to make human nature the centre round 
which all things revolve. But they do so, not by ex- 



m ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 323 

alting the visible, but by materializing the invisible. 
" If there be a sphere of knowledge level to our 
capacities, and of the utmost importance to us, we 
ought surely to apply ourselves with all diligence to 
this, our proper business ; and esteem everything else 
nothing, nothing as to us, in comparison of it. . . . 
Our province is virtue and religion, life and manners ; 
the science of improving the temper, and making the 
heart better. This is the field assigned to us to cul- 
tivate : how much it has lam neglected is indeed 
astonishing. . . . He who should find out one rule to 
assist us in this work would deserve infinitely better 
of mankind than all the improvers of other knowledge 
put together. (^Sermon xv.) This is the theology of 
Butler and his contemporaries ; a utilitarian theology, 
like the Baconian philosophy, contemning all employ- 
ment of mental power that does not bring in fruit. 
" Intellectui non plumse, sed plumbum addendum et 
pondera," (Bacon, " Nov. Or.," i. 104,) might be its 
device. 

In the " Analogy " it is the same. His term of 
comparison, the " constitution and course of nature,'^' 
is not what we should understand by that term ; not 
what science can disclose to us of the laws of the 
cosmos, but a narrow observation of what men do 
in ordinary life. We see what he means by the 
" constitution of things," by his saying (Sermon xv.) 
that " the writings of Solomon are very much taken 
up with reflections upon human nature and human 
life ; to which he hath added, in Ecclesiastes, reflec- 
tions upon the constitution of things." In part i. 
chap. 3, of the " Analogy," he compares the moral 
government of God with the natural : the distinction 
is perhaps from Balguy (" Divine Rectitude," p. 89) ; 



324 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

that is to say, one part of natural religion with another ; 
for the distinction vanishes, except upon a very con- 
ventional sense of the term " moral." Altogether, we 
miss in these divines not only distinct philosophical 
conceptions, but a scientific use of terms. Dr. Whe- 
well considers that Butler shunned " the appearance 
of technical terms for the elements of our moral con- 
stitution on which he speculated," and thinks that he 
" was driven to indirect modes of expression." (^Moral 
Philosophy in England., p. 109.) The truth is, that 
Butler uses the language of liis day upon the topics 
on which ho writes. The technical terms and strict 
logical forms which had been adhered to by the writ- 
ers, small as well as great, of the seventeenth century, 
had been disused as pedantic ; banished first from 
literature, and then from education. They did not 
appear in style, because they did not form part of the 
mental habit of the writers. Butler does not, as Dr. 
Whewell supposes, think in one form, and write in 
another, out of condescension to his readers : he 
thinks in the same language in which he and those 
around him speak. Mr. Hort's remark, that " But- 
ler's writings are stoic to the core, in the true and an- 
cient sense of the word," (" Cambridge Essays," 1856, 
p. 337,) must be extended to their style. The English 
style of philosophical writing in the Hanoverian period 
is, to the English of the seventeenth century, as the 
Greek of Epictetus, Antoninus, or Plutarch, is to that 
of Aristotle ; and for the same reason. The English 
stoics and their Greek predecessors were practical 
men, who moralized in a practical way on the facts of 
common life, and in the language of common life. 
Neither the rhetorical schools of the Empire nor the 
universities of England any longer taught the correct 



IN EXGLAXD, 1688-1750. 325 

use of metaphysical language. To imitate classical 
Latin was become the chief aim of the university 
man in his public exercises ; and precision of lan- 
guage became, under that discipline, very speedily a 
lost art. 

Upon the whole, the writings of that period are 
serviceable to us chiefly as showing what can and 
what cannot be effected by common-sense thinking 
in theology. It is of little consequence to inquire 
whether or not the objections of the Deists and the 
Socinians were removed by the answers brought to 
meet them. Perhaps, on the whole, we might be 
borne out in saying that the defence is at least as 
good as the attack ; and so, that, even on the ground 
of common reason, the Christian evidences may be 
arranged in such a way as to balance the common- 
sense improbability of the supernatural, — that " there 
are three chances to one for revelation, and only two 
against it." (^Tracts for the Times, No. 85.) Had not 
circumstances given a new direction to religious in- 
terests, the Deistical controversy might have gone on 
indefinitely, and the " amebean strain of objection 
and reply, et cantare pares et respondere parati^^ have 
been prolonged to this day, without any other result. 
But that result forces on the mind the suggestion, that 
either religious faith has no existence, or that it must 
be to be reached by some other road than that of the 
" trial of the witnesses." It is a reductio ad ahsurdum 
of common-sense philosophy, of home-baked theology, 
when we find that the result of the whole is, that " it 
is safer to believe in a God, lest, if there should hap- 
pen to be one, he might send us to hell for denying 
Ms existence." (Maurice, Essays, p. 236.) If a religion 
be wanted which shall debase instead of elevating, 



826 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

tins should be its creed. If the religious history of 
the eighteenth century proves anything, it is this : 
That good sense, the best good sense, when it sets to 
work with the materials of human nature and Scrip- 
ture to construct a religion, will find its way to an 
ethical code, irreproachable in its contents, and based 
on a just estimate and wise observation of the facts 
of life, ratified by divine sanctions in the shape of 
hope and fear, of future rewards and penalties of obe- 
dience and disobedience. This the eighteenth century 
did, and did well. It has enforced the truths of natu- 
ral morality with a solidity of argument, and variety of 
proof, which they have not received since the Stoical 
epoch, if then ; but there its ability ended. When 
it came to the supernatural part of Christianity, its 
embarrassment began. It was forced to keep it as 
much in the background as possible, or to bolster it 
up by lame and inadequate reasonings. The philos- 
ophy of common sense had done its own work : it 
attempted more, only to show, by its failure, that some 
higher organon was needed for the establishment of 
supernatural truth. The career of the evidential 
school, its success and failure, — its success in vin- 
dicating the ethical part of Christianity and the 
regulative aspect of revealed truth, its failure in estab- 
lishing the supernatural and speculative part, — have 
enriched the history of doctrine with a complete refu- 
tation of that method as an instrument of theological 
investigation. 

This judgment, however, must not be left unbal- 
anced by a consideration on the other side. It wiU 
hardly be supposed that the drift of what has been 
said is, that common sense is out of place in religion 
or in any other matter. The defect of the eighteenth 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 327 

century theology was not in having too much good 
sense, but in having nothing besides. In the present 
day, when a godless orthodoxy threatens, as in the 
fifteenth century, to extinguish religious thought 
altogether, and nothing is allowed in the Church of 
England but the formulae of past thinkings, which 
have long lost all sense of any kind, it may seem out 
of season to be bringing forward a misapplication of 
common sense in a bygone age. There are times and 
circumstances when religious ideas will be greatly 
benefited by being submitted to the rough-and-ready 
tests by which busy men try what comes in their 
way, — by being made to stand their trial, and be 
freely canvassed, coram populo. As poetry is not for 
the critics, so religion is not for the theologians. 
When it is stifiened into phrases, and these phrases 
are declared to be objects of reverence, but not of 
intelligence, it is on the way to become a useless 
encumbrance, — the rubbish of the past, — blocking 
the road. Theology then retires into the position 
it occupies in the Church of Rome at present, — an 
unmeaning frostwork of dogma, out of all relation to 
the actual history of man. In that system, theologi- 
cal virtue is an artificial life quite distinct from the 
moral virtues of real life. " Parmi nous," says Remu- 
sat, " un homme religieux est trop souvent un homme 
qui se croit entoure d'ennemis, qui voit avec defiance 
ou scandale les ^venements et les institutions du 
siecle, qui se desole d'etre ne dans les jours maudits, 
et qui a besoin d'un grand fond de bonte innde pour 
empecher ses pieuses aversions de devenir de mor- 
telles haines." This system is equally fatal to popular 
morality and to religious theory. It locks up virtue 
in the cloister, and theology in the library. It orig- 



328 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

inates caste sanctity and a traditional philosophy. 
The ideal of holiness striven after may once have 
been lofty ; the philosophy now petrified into tradition 
may once have been a vital faith : but, now that they 
are withdrawn from public life, they have ceased 
to be social influences. On the other hand, the 
eighteenth century exhibits human attainment lev- 
elled to the lowest secular model of prudence and 
honesty, but still, such as it was, proposed to all 
men as their rule of life. Practical life as it was, 
was the theme of the pulpit, the press, and the draw- 
ing-room. Its theory of life was not lofty ; but it was 
true as far as it went. It did not substitute a facti- 
tious phraseology, the pass-words of the modern pul- 
pit, for the simple facts of life, but called things by 
their right names. " Nullum numen habes si absit 
prudentia " was its motto, — not denying the nwnen, 
but bringing him very close to the individual person, 
as his " moral governor." The prevaiUng philosophy 
was not a profound metaphysic, but it was a soundly 
based arrangement of the facts of society ; it was not 
a scheme of the sciences, but a manual for every-day 
use. Nothing of the wild spirit of universal negation 
which was spread over the Continent fifty years later 
belonged to the solid Rationalism of this period. The 
human understanding wished to be satisfied, and did 
not care to believe that of which it could not see the 
substantial ground. The reason was coming slowly 
to see that it had duties which it could not devolve 
upon others ; that a man must think for himself, pro- 
tect his own rights, and administer his own affairs. 
The reason was never less extravagant than in this its 
first essay of its strength. Its demands were modest ; 
it was easily satisfied, — far too easily, we must think. 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 329 

when we look at some of the reasonings which passed 
as valid. 

The habits of controversy in which they lived de- 
ceived the belligerents themselves. The controversial 
form of their theology, which has been fatal to its 
credit since, was no less detrimental to its soundness 
at the time. They could not discern the line between 
what they did and what they could not prove. The 
polemical temper deforms the books they have writ- 
ten. Literature was, indeed, partially refined from the 
coarser scurrilities with which the Caroline divines, 
a century before, had assailed their Romanist oppo- 
nents ; but there is still an air of vulgarity about the 
polite writing of the age, which the divines adopt 
along with its style. The cassocked divine assumes 
the airs of the " roaring blade," and ruffles it on the 
mall with a horsewhip under his arm. Warburton's 
stock argument is a threat to cudgel any one who dis- 
putes his opinion. All that can be said is, that this 
was a habit of treating your opponent which pervaded 
society. At a much later period, Person complains, 
" In these ticklish times, . . . talk of religion, it is 
odds but you have infidel, blasphemer, atheist, or 
schismatic, thundered in your ears ; touch upon pol- 
itics, you will be in luck if you are only charged with 
a tendency to treason. Nor is the innocence of your 
intention any safeguard. It is not the publication 
that shows the character of the author, but the charac- 
ter of the author that shows the tendency of the pub- 
lication." (Luard's "Person," Camb. Essays, 18E>7.') 
A license of party vituperation in the House of Com- 
mons existed from the time of the opposition to Wal- 
pole onwards, which has long been banished by more 



330 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

humane manners. " The men who took a foremost 
part seemed to be intent on disparaging each other, 
and proving that neither possessed any qnahfication 
of wisdom, knowledge, or public virtue. . . . Epi- 
thets of reproach were lavished personally on Lord 
North, which were applicable only to the vilest and 
most contemptible of mankind." (Massey, Hist, of 
England^ ii. 218.) 

Were this blustering language a blemish of style, 
and nothing more, it would taint their books with vul- 
garity as literature, but it would not vitiate their mat- 
ter. But the fault reaches deeper than skin-deep. It 
is a most serious drawback on the good sense of the 
age, that it wanted justice in its estimate of persons. 
They were no more capable of judging their friends 
than their foes. In Pope's satires there is no medium, 
— our enemies combine all the odious vices, however 
incongruous ; our friends have " every virtue under 
lieaven." We hear sometimes of Pope's peculiar 
" malignity ; " but he was only doing what every one 
around him was doing, only with a greatly superior 
literary skill. Their savage invective against each 
other is not a morally worse feature than the style 
of fulsome compliment in which friends address each 
other. The private correspondence of intimate friends 
betrays an unwholesome insincerity, which contrasts 
strangely with their general manhness of character. 
The bu.rly intellect of Warburton displays an appetite 
for flattery as insatiable as that of Miss Seward and 
her coterie. 

This habit of exaggerating both good and evil the 
divines share with the other writers of the time. But 
theological literature, as a written debate, had a form 
of malignant imputation peculiar to itself. This is 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 331 

one arising out of the rationalistic fiction which both 
parties assumed ; viz., that their respective beliefs 
were determined by an impartial inquiry into the evi- 
dence. The orthodox writers considered this evidence 
so clear and certain for their own conclusions, that 
they could account for its not seeming so to others, 
only by the supposition of some moral obliquity which 
darkened the understanding in such cases. Hence 
the obnoxious assumption of the divines, that the De- 
ists were men of corrupt morals ; and the retort of 
the infidel writers, that the clergy were hired advo- 
cates. Moral imputation, which is justly banished 
from legal argument, seems to find a proper place in 
theological. Those Christian Deists, who, like Toland 
or Collins, approached most nearly in their belief to 
revelation, were treated, not better, but worse, by the 
orthodox champions ; their larger admissions being 
imputed to disingenuousness or calculated reserve. 
This stamp of advocacy which was impressed on 
English theology at the Reformation — its first work 
of consideration was an ^'Apology" — it has not, 
to this day, shaken off. Our theologians, with rare 
exceptions, do not penetrate below the surface of 
their subject, but are engaged in defending or vindi- 
cating it. The current phrases, of " the bulwarks of 
our faith," " dangerous to Christianity," are but in- 
stances of the habitual position in which we assume 
ourselves to stand. Even more philosophic minds 
cannot get rid of the idea, that theology is polemical. 
Theological study is still the study of topics of de- 
fence. Even Prof. Eraser can exhort us, "that, by 
the study of these topics, we might not merely disarm 
the enemies of religion of what in other times has 
been, and will continue to be, a favorite weapon of 



332 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

assault ; but we might even convert that weapon into 
an instrument of use in the Christian service." {Es- 
says in Philosophy , p. 4.) " Modern science," as it is 
called, is recommended to the young divine, because 
in it he may find means of " confuting infidelity." 

A little consideration will show that the grounds 
on which advocacy before a legal tribunal rests make 
it inappropriate in theological reasoning. It is not 
pretended that municipal law is co-extensive with 
universal law, and therefore incapable of admitting 
right on both sides. It is allowed that the natural 
right may be, at times, on one side, and the legal title 
on the other ; not to mention the extreme case where 
" communis error facit jus." Tlie advocate is not 
there to supply all the materials out of which the 
judge is to form his decision, but only one side of the 
case. He is the mere representative of his client's 
interests, and has not to discuss the abstract merits of 
the juridical point which may be involved. He does 
not undertake to show that the law is conformable to 
natural right, but to establish the condition of his 
client relatively to the law. But the rational defender 
of the faith has no place in his system for the varia- 
ble, or the indifferent, or the non-natural. He pro- 
ceeds on the supposition, that the whole system of the 
Church is the one and exclusively true expression of 
reason upon the subject on which it legislates. Ho 
claims for the whole of received knowledge what the 
jurist claims for international la\v, — to be a universal 
science. He lays before us, on the one hand, the tra- 
ditional canon or symbol of doctrine ; on the other 
hand, he teaches that the free use of reason upon the 
facts of nature and Scripture is the real mode by 
which this traditional symbol is arrived at. To show, 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 333 

then, that the candid pursuit of truth leads every im- 
partial intellect to the Anglican conclusion, was the 
task which, on tlieir theory of religious proof, their 
theology had to undertake. The process, accordingly, 
should have been analogous to that of the jurist or 
legislator with regard to the internal evidence, and 
to that of the judge with regard to the external evi- 
dence. If theological argument forgets the judge 
and assumes the advocate, or betrays the least bias to 
one side, the conclusion is valueless ; the principle of 
free inquiry has been violated. Roman Catholic theo- 
logians consistently enough teach that " apologetics " 
make no part of theology, as usually conducted as re- 
plies to special objections urged ; but that a true apol- 
ogetic must be founded (1) on a discovery of the 
general principle from which the attack proceeds, and 
(2) on the exhibition, per contra^ of that general 
ground-thought of which the single Christian truths 
are developments. (Hageman, Die Aufgahe der Catho- 
lischen Apologetik.^ 

With rare exceptions, the theology of the Hanove- 
rian period is of the most violently partisan character. 
It seats itself, by its theory, in the judicial chair ; but 
it is only to comport itself there like Judge Jefferies. 
One of the favorite books of the time was Sherlock's 
" Trial of the Witnesses." First published in 1729, it 
speedily went through fourteen editions. It concludes 
in this way : — 

" Judge : What say you ? Are the apostles guilty of giving 
false evidence in the case of the resurrection of Jesus, or not 
guilty ? 

" Foreman : Not guilty. 

" Judge : Very well ; and now, gentlemen, I resign my commis- 
sion, and am your humble servant. 

" The company then rose up, and were beginning to pay their 
compliments to the judge and the counsel, but were interrupted 



834 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

by a gentleman, •who -went up to the judge, and offered him a fee. 
' What is this ? ' says the judge. ' A fee, sir,' said the gentleman. 
' A fee to a judge is a bribe,' said the judge. ' True, sir,' said the 
gentleman ; ' but you have resigned your commission, and will not 
be the first judge who has come from the bench to the bar without 
any diminution of honor. Now, Lazarus's case is to come on next; 
and this fee is to retain you on his side.' " 

One might say that the apologists of that day had, in 
like manner, left the bench for the bar, and taken a 
brief for the apostles. They are impatient at the 
smallest demur, and deny loudly that there is any 
weight in anything advanced by their opponents. In 
the way they override the most serious difficulties, 
they show anything but the temper which is supposed 
to qualify for the weighing of evidence. The aston- 
ishing want of candor in their reasoning, their blind- 
ness to real difficulty, the ill-concealed predetermina- 
tion to find a particular verdict, the rise of their style 
in passion in the same proportion as their argument 
fails in strength, constitute a class of Avriters more 
calculated than any other to damage their own cause 
with young, ingenuous minds, bred in the school of 
Locke to believe that " to love truth for truth's sake 
is the principal part of human perfection in this 
world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues." 
(Locke, set. 73, Letter to Collins.^ Spalding has de- 
scribed the moral shock his faith received on hearing 
an eminent clergyman in confidential conversation 
with another, who had cited some powerful argument 
against revelation, say, " That 's truly awkward : let 
us consider a little how we get out of that ; ivie wir 
uns salviren. (^Selbstbiographie, p. 128.) A truthful 
mind is a much rarer possession than is commonly 
supposed ; for " it is as easy to close the eyes of the 
mind as those of the body." (Butler, Sermon x.) And, 
in this rarity, there is a natural limit to the injury 



m ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 335 

which uncaiidid vindications of revelation can cause. 
To whatever causes is to be attributed the decline 
of Deism, from 1750 onwards, the books polemically 
written against it cannot reckon among them. When 
Casaubon first visited Paris, and was being shown over 
the Sorbonne, his guide said, " This is the hall in 
which the doctors have disputed for three hundred 
years." — "Ay; and what have they settled?" was 
his remark. 

Some exceptions, doubtless, there are to the incon- 
clusiveness of this debate. Here, again, the eminent 
exception is the " Analogy." Butler, it is true, comes 
forward, not as an investigator, but as a pleader. But, 
when we pass from his inferior brethren to this great 
master of the art, we find ourselves in the hands of 
one who knows the laws of evidence, and carefully 
keeps his statements within them. Butler does not, 
like his fellow-apologists, disguise the fact, that the 
evidence is no stronger than it is. " If it be Sipoor 
thing " to argue in this way, " the epithet poor may 
be applied, I fear, as properly to great part, or the 
whole, of human life, as it is to the things mentioned." 
(^Analogy ^ part ii. chap. 8.) Archbishop Whately, de- 
fining the temper of the rational theologian, says, 
" A good man will, indeed, wish to find the evidence 
of the Christian religion satisfactory ; but a wise man 
will not, for that reason, think it satisfactory, but will 
weigh the evidence the more carefully on account of 
the importance of the question." (^Essays, second se- 
ries, p. 24.) This character, Butler's argument exem- 
plifies. We can feel, as we read, how his judgment 
must have been offonded in his contemporaries by the 
disproportion between the positiveness of their asser- 
tion and the feebleness of their argument. Nor should 



336 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

we expect that Butler satisfied them. They thought 
him " a little too little vigorous," and " wished he 
would have spoke more earnestly." (Byrom^s Journal, 
March, 1737.) Men who believed that they were in 
possession of a " demonstration " of Christianity were 
not likely to be satisfied with one who saw so strongly 
" the doubtfulness in which things were involved," 
that he could not comprehend " men's being impatient 
out of action, or vehement in it." ( Unpublished Re^ 
mains ^ &c.) War burton, who has a proof which " is 
very little short of mathematical certainty, and to 
which nothing but a mere physical possibility of the 
contrary can be opposed," (" Divine Leg.," b. i. § 1,) 
was the man for the age, which did not care to stand 
higgling with Butler over the degrees of probability. 
What could the world do with a man who '^ designed 
the search after trutli as the business of my life," 
(" Correspondence with Dr. Clarke,") and who was 
so little prepared to dogmatize about the future world, 
that he rather felt that " there is no account to be 
given, in the way of reason, of men's so strong at- 
tachments to the present world " ? (^Sermon, vii.) But- 
ler's doubtfulness, however, it should be remarked, is 
not the unsteadiness of the sceptical, but the wariness 
of the judicial mind, — a mind determined for itself by 
its own instincts, but careful to confine its statements 
to others within the evidence produced in court. The 
" Analogy" does not depicture an inward struggle in 
his own mind ; but, as " he told a friend, his way of 
writing it had been to endeavor to answer, as he went 
along, every possible objection that might occur to any 
one against any position ( f his in Jiis book." (Bart- 
lett's Life of Butler, p. 50.) He does not doubt him- 
self; but he sees, what others do not see, the difficulty 



IX ENGLAND, lGSS-1750. 337 

of proving religion to others. There is a saying of 
Pitt circulating to the effect that the '' Analogy " is " a 
dangerous book : it raises more doubts than it solves." 
All that is true in this is, that, to a mind which has 
never nourished objections to revelation, a book of 
evidences may be the means of first suggesting them. 
But in 1736 the objections were everywhere current, 
and the answers to them were mostly of that truly 
''dangerous" sort, in which assertion runs ahead of 
proof. The merit of Butler lies, not in the " irrefra- 
gable proof" which Southey's epitaph attributes to Ms 
construction, but in his showing the nature of the 
proof, and daring to admit that it was less than cer- 
tain ; to own that " a man may be fully convinced of 
the truth of a matter and upon the strongest reasons, 
and yet not be able to answer all the difficulties which 
may be raised upon it." (^Durham Charge, 1751.) 

Another, perhaps the only other book of this po- 
lemical tribe which can be said to have been com- 
pletely successful as an answer, is one most unlike the 
'' Analogy " m all its nobler features. This is Bent- 
ley's " Remarks upon a late Discourse of Freethinking, 
by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis," 1713. Coarse, arro- 
gant, and abusive, with all Bentley's worst faults of 
style and temper, this masterly critique is decisive ; 
not, of course, of the Deistical controversy, on which 
the critic avoids entering. The " Discourse of Free- 
thinking," was a small tract published in 1713 by 
Anthony Collins. Collins was a gentleman of inde- 
pendent fortune, whose high personal character and 
general respectability seemed to give a weight to his 
words which assuredly they do not carry of them- 
selves. By freethinking, he means liberty of thought, 
— the right of bringing all received opmions whatso- 
15 V 



838 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

ever to the touchstone of reason. Among the grounds 
or authorities by which he supports this natural right, 
CoUins unluckily had recourse to history, and largely, 
of course, to the precedent of the Greek philosophers. 
Collins, who had been bred at Eton and King's, was 
probably no worse a scholar than his contemporary 
Kingsmen ; and the range of his reading was that of a 
man who had made the classics the companions of his 
maturer years. But that scholarship which can sup- 
ply a quotation from Lucan, or flavor the style with 
an occasional allusion to Tally or Seneca, is quite 
incompetent to apply Greek or Roman precedent 
properly to a modern case. Addison, the pride of 
Oxford, had done no better. In his " Essay on the 
Evidences of Christianity," Addison " assigns, as 
grounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as 
that of the Cocklane ghost, and forgeries as rank as 
Ireland's ' Yortigern ; ' puts faith in the lie about the 
thundering legion ; is convinced that Tiberius moved 
the Senate to admit Jesus among the gods ; and pro- 
nounces the letter of Abgarus, King of Edessa, to be 
a record of great authority." (Macaulay : Essays.) 
But the public was quite satisfied with Addison's 
citations, in which a public which had given the 
victory to Boyle in the Phalaris controversy * could 
hardly suspect anything wrong. Collins was not to 
escape so easily. The Freethinker flounders hope- 
lessly among the authorities he has invoked. Like 
the necromancer's apprentice, he is worried by the 
fiends he has summoned, but cannot lay ; and Bentley, 
on whose nod they wait, is there, like another Corne- 
lius Agrippa, hounding them on, and enjoying the 
sport. Collins's mistakes, mistranslations, misconcep- 

* See the Appendix. 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 339 

tions, and distortions are so monstrous, that it is diffi- 
cult for us now, forgetful how low classical learning 
had sunk, to believe that they are mistakes, and not 
wilful errors. It is rare sport to Bentley, this rat- 
hunting in an old rick ; and he lays about him in 
high glee, braining an authority at every blow. When 
he left off abruptly, in the middle of a " Third Part," 
it was not because he was satiated with slaughter, 
but to substitute a new excitement, no less congenial 
to his temper, — a quarrel with the University about* 
his fees. A grace, voted 1715, tendering him the 
public thanks of the University, and "• praying him, 
in the name of the University, to finish what remains 
of so useful a work," could not induce him to resume 
his pen. The " Remarks of Phileleutherus Lipsien- 
sis," unfinished though they are, and trifling as was 
the book which gave occasion to them, are, perhaps, 
the best of all Bentley's performances. They have 
all the merits of the Phalaris dissertation, with the 
advantage of a far nobler subject. They show how 
Bentley's exact appreciation of the value of terms 
could, when he chose to apply it to that purpose, 
serve him as a key to the philosophical ideas of past 
times, no less than to those of poetical metaphor. The 
tone of the pamphlet is most offensive ; " not only not 
insipid, but exceedingly bad-tasted." We can only 
say, the taste is that of his age, while the knowledge 
is all his own. It was fair to show that his antagonist 
undertook " to interpret the Prophets and Solomon, 
without Hebrew ; Plutarch and Zosimus (Collins spells 
it Zozimus), without Greek ; and Cicero and Lucan, 
without Latin." (^Remarks, part i. No. 3.) But the 
dirt endeavored to be thrown on Collins will cleave to 
the hand that throws it. It may be worth mention, 



340 TENDENCIES OF KELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

that this tract of Bentley contains the original of Sid- 
ney Smith's celebrated defence of the " prizes " in the 
Church. The passage is a favorable specimen of the 
moral level of a polemic who was accusing his oppo- 
nent of holding " opinions the most abject and base 
that human nature is capable of." (Letter prefixed 
to Remarks.^ 

" He can never conceive or wish a priesthood either quieter for 
him, or cheaper, than that of the present Church of Enghmd. Of 
your quietness, himself is a convincing proof, who has writ this out- 
rageous book, and has met with no punishment nor prosecution ; 
and for the cheapness, that appeared lately in one of your parlia- 
ments, when the accounts exhibited showed that six thousand of 
your clergy — the greater part of your whole number — had, at a 
middle rate one with another, not fifty pounds a year ; a poor 
emolument for so long, so laborious, so expensive an education as 
must qualify them for holy orders. While I resided at Oxford, and 
saw such a conflux of youth to their annual admissions, I have 
often studied and admired why their parents w^ould, under such 
mean encouragements, design their sons for the church ; and those 
the most towardly and capable and select geniuses among their 
children, who must needs have emerged in a secular life. I con- 
gratulated, indeed, the felicity of your establishment, which at- 
tracted the choice youth of your nation for such very low pay : but 
my wonder was at the parents, who generally have interest, main- 
tenance, and wealth, the first thing in their view ; till at last one 
of your state-lotteries ceased my astonishment. For as, in that, a 
few glittering prizes, one thousand, five thousand, ten thousand 
pounds, among an infinity of blanks, drew troops of adventurers, 
who, if the whole fund had been equally ticketed, would never have 
come in ; so a few shining dignities in your church, prebends, dean- 
eries, bishoprics, are the pious fraud that induces and decoys the 
parents to risk their child's fortune in it. Every one hopes his own 
will get some prize in the church, and never reflects on the thou- 
sands of blanks in poor country livings. And, if a foreigner may 
tell you his mind from what he sees at home, 't is this part of your 
establishment that makes your clergy excel ours \i. e. in Germany, 
from which ' Phileleutherus Lipsiensis ' is supposed to write]. Do 
but once level all your preferments, and you '11 soon be as level in 
your learning ; for, instead of the flower of the English youth, 
you '11 have only the refuse sent to your academies, and those, too, 
cramped and crippled in their studies, for want of aim and emula- 
tion. So that, if your Freethinkers had any politics, instead of 
suppressing your whole order, they should make you all alike ; or, 
if that cannot be done, make your preferments a very lottery in 
the whole similitude. Let your church dignities be pure chance 
prizes, without regard to abilities or morals or letters." — Remarks^ 
&c., part ii. § 40. 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 341 

It lias been mentioned that Bentley does not attempt 
to reply to the argument of the "Discourse on Free- 
tliinking." His tactic is to ignore it, and to assume 
that it is only meant as a covert attack on Christianity ; 
that Collins is an Athiest fighting under the disguise 
of a Deist. Some excuse, perhaps, may be made for a 
man nourished on pedagogic Latin, and accustomed to 
launch furious sarcasm at any opponent who betrayed 
a brutal ignorance of the difference between ac and 
et. But Collins was not a sharper, and would have 
disdained practices to which Bentley stooped for the 
sake of a professorship. When Bentley, in the pride 
of academic dignity, could thus browbeat a person of 
Collins's consideration, it was not to be expected that 
the inferior fry of Deistical writers — Toland, a writer 
for the press ; Tindal, a fellow of a College ; or Chubb, 
a journeyman glover — met with fairer treatment from 
their opponents. The only exception to this is the 
case of Shaftesbury, to whom, as well after his death 
as in his lifetime, his privileges as a peer seem to have 
secured immunity from hangman's usage. He is 
simply " a late noble author." Nor was this respect 
inspired by the earl's profession of Christianity. He 
does, indeed, make this profession with the utmost 
unreserve. He asserts his " steady orthodoxy," and 
" entire submission to the truly Christian and Catholic 
doctrines of our holy Church, as by law established ; " 
and that he holds " the mysteries of our religion, even 
in the minutest particulars." ( Characteristicks, vol. iii. 
p. 315.) But this outward profession would only have 
brought down upon any other writer an aggravated 
charge of cowardly malice and concealment of Athe- 
ism. K Shaftesbury was spared on account of his 
rank, the orthodox writers were not altogether wrong 



342 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

in fastening upon this disingenuoiisness as a moral 
characteristic of their antagonists. The excuse for 
this want of manliness in men who please themselves 
with insinuating unpopular opinions which they dare 
not advocate openly, is that it is an injustice perpe- 
trated by those who have public feeling on their side. 
" They make," says Mr. Tayler, '' the honest expres- 
sion of opinion penal, and then condemn men for 
disingcnuousness. They invite to free discussion 
but determine beforehand that only one conclusion 
can be sound and moral. They fill the arena of 
public debate with every instrument of torture and 
annoyance for the feeling heart, the sensitive imagina- 
tion, and the scrupulous intellect, and then are angry 
that men do not rush headlong into the martyrdom 
that has been prepared for them." (^Religious Life 
of England, p. 282.) 

In days when the pillory was the punishment for 
common libel, it cannot be thought much that heresy 
and infidelity should be punished by public opprobri- 
um ; and public abhorrence was the most that a writer 
against revelation had now to fear. Mandeville's " Fa- 
ble of the Bees," indeed, was presented as a nuisance 
by the grand jury of Middlesex, in 1723 ; as were Bo- 
lingbroke's collected " Works," in 1752, and Toland's 
" Christianity not Mysterious," in 1699. We find, too, 
that Toland had to fly from Dublin, and Collins to go 
out of the way to Holland, for fear of further conse- 
quences. But nothing ever came of these present- 
ments. The only prosecution for religious libel was 
that of Woolston, 2 George II., in which the defend- 
ant, who was not of sound mind, provoked, and even 
compelled, the law officers of the crown to proceed 
against him, though they were very reluctant to do so. 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 343 

"When thus compelled to declare the law on this occa- 
sion, the Lord Chief-Justice (Raymond) '' would not 
allow it to be doubted, that to write against Chris- 
tianity in general was punishable at common law." 
Yet both then and since judges and prosecutors have 
shown themselves shy of insisting upon the naked 
offence of " impugning the truth of Christianity." 
That it is an offence at common law, independent of 
9 and 10 William III., no lawyer will deny. But an 
instinctive sense •f the incompatibility of this legal 
doctrine with the fundamental tenet of Protestant 
.Rationalism has always served to keep it in the back- 
ground. " The judges seem to have played fast and 
loose in this matter, in such sort as might enable the 
future judge to -quote the tolerant or the intolerant 
side of their doctrine, as might prove convenient; 
and, while seemingly disavowing all interference with 
fair discussion, they still kept a wary hold of the pre- 
cedents of Hale and Raymond, and of the great arca- 
num of ' part and parcel ; ' ' semianimesque micant 
digiti, ferrumque retractant.' " (^Considerations on the 
Law of Libel. By John Search, 1833.) 

Whatever excuse the Deistical writers might have 
for their insidious manner of writing, it is more to the 
present purpose to observe that we may draw from it 
the conclusion, that public opinion was throughout 
on the side of the defenders of Christianity. It might 
seem almost superfluous to say this, were it not that 
complaints meet us on every side, which seem to imply 
the very contrary ; that, in the words of Mr. Gregory, 
" the doctrine of our Church is exploded, and our holy 
religion become only a name which is everywhere spo- 
ken against." (Pref. to Beveridge^s Private Thoughts, 
1709.) Thirty years later, Butler writes that " it is 



344 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

come to be taken for granted, that Christianity is not 
so much as a subject of inquiry ; but that it is now, at 
length, discovered to be fictitious. Accordingly, they 
treat it as if in the present age this were an agreed 
point among all people of discernment, and notliing 
remained but to set it up as a principal subject of 
mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals for 
its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the 
world." QAdverlisement to Analogy, 1736.) However 
a loose kind of Deism might be the«tone of fashionable 
circles, it is clear that distinct disbelief of Christianity 
was by no means the general state of the public mind. 
The leaders of the Low-Church and Whig party were 
quite aware of this. Notwithstanding the universal 
complaints of the High-Church party of the prevalence 
of infidelity, it is obvious that this mode of thinking 
was confined to a very small section of society. The 
" Independent Whig " (May 4, 1720), in the middle of 
its blustering and endeavors to terrify the clergy with 
their unpopularity, is obliged to admit that " the High- 
Church Popish clergy -will laugh in their sleeves at this 
advice, and think there is folly enough yet left among 
the laity to support their authority ; and will laugh 
themselves, and rejoice over the ignorance of the uni- 
versities, the stupidity of the drunken squires, the 
panic of the tender sex, and the never-to-be-shaken 
constancy of the multitude." A still better evidence 
is the confidence and success with which the writers 
on the side of revelation appealed to the popular 
passions, and cowed their Deistical opponents into the 
use of that indirect and disingenuous procedure with 
which they then taunted them. The clerical sphere 
was much more a sphere by itself than it has since 
become. Notwithstanding the large toleration really 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 345 

practised, strict professional etiquette was still observed 
in the Church and the universities. The horizontal 
hat, the starched band, and the cassock, were still 
worn in public ; and certain proprieties of outward 
manner were expected from " the cloth." The viola- 
tion of these proprieties was punished by the forfeiture 
of the offenders' prospects of preferment ; a point on 
which the most extreme sensitiveness existed. In the 
Balguy and Waterland set, an officious spirit of dela- 
tion seems to have flourished. Tlie general habit of 
publicly canvassing religious topics was very favorable 
to this espionage ; as, at the Reformation, the Catho- 
lics gathered their best calumnies against Luther from 
his unreserved " table-talk." 

It was not difficult to draw the unhappy Middleton 
into "unguarded expressions " (Van Mildert, " Life of 
Waterland," p. 162) ; and something wliich had fallen 
from Rundle in his younger days was used against him 
so successfully, that even the Talbot interest was able 
to procure liim only an Irish bishopric. Lord Ches- 
terfield, seeing what advantage the High-Church party 
derived from this tactic, endeavored to turn it against 
them. He gives a circumstantial account of a con- 
versation with Pope, which would tend to prove that 
Atterbury was nearly all his life a sceptic. The thing 
was not true, as Mr. Carruthers has shown (" Life of 
Pope," 2d ed., p. 213) ; and, true or false, the weapon 
in Chesterfield's hands was pointless. 

Though the general feeling of the country was suf- 
ficiently decided to oblige all who wished to write 
against Christianity to do so under a mask, this was 
not the case with attacks upon the clergy. Since the 
days of the Lollards, there had never been a time 
when the established ministers of religion were held 
15* 



846 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

in SO much contempt as in the Hanoverian period, or 
when satire upon Churchmen was so congenial to gen- 
eral feeling. This, too, was the more extraordinary, 
as there was no feeling against the Church Establish- 
ment, nor was Nonconformity as a theory ever less in 
favor. The contempt was for the persons, manners, 
and character of the ecclesiastics. When Macaulay 
brought out his portrait of the clergyman of the Revo- 
lution period, his critics endeavored to show that that 
portrait was not true to life. They seem to have 
brought out the fact, that it was pretty fairly true to 
literature. The difficult point is to estimate how far 
the satirical and popular literature of any age may be 
taken as representative of life. Satire to be popular 
must exaggerate ; but it must be exaggeration of 
known and recognized facts. Mr. Cliurchill Babing- 
ton (" Character of the Clergy, &c., considered," 
p. 48) sets aside two of Macaulay's authorities, Old- 
ham and T. Wood, because Oldham was an Atheist, 
and Wood a Deist. Admitting that an Atheist and a 
Deist can be under no obligation to trutli, yet a satir- 
ist who intends to be read is under the most inevita- 
ble engagement to the probable. Satire does not 
create the sentiment to which it appeals. A portrait 
of the country parson temp. George the Second, which 
should be drawn verbatim from the pamphlets of the 
day, would be no more historical than is that portrait 
of the begging friar of the sixteenth century, which 
our historians repeat after Erasmus and the " Epis- 
tolae Obscurorum Yirorum." History may be ex- 
tracted from them ; but these caricatures are not 
themselves history. 

One inference which we may safely draw is that 
public feeling encouraged such representations. It 



IX ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 347 

is a symptom of the religious temper of the times, 
that the same public which compelled the Deist to 
Tvear the mask of " solemn sneer " in his assaults 
upon Christian doctrine, required no such disguise or 
reserve when the ministers of the Church were spoken 
of. Nor does the e^ddence consist in a few stray ex- 
tracts from here and there a Deist or a cynic : it is 
the tone of all the popular writers of that time. The 
unedifying lives of the clergy are a standard theme 
of sarcasm, and continue to be so till a late period in 
the century, when a gradual change may be observed 
in the language of literature. This antipathy to the 
clergy, visible in the Hanoverian period, admits of 
comparison with that vein which colors the popular 
songs of the Wickliffite era. In the fifteenth century 
the satire is not indiscriminate. It is against the 
monks and friars, the bishops and cardinals, as distinct 
from the " poor persoun of a toun." Its point against 
the organized hypocrisy of the Papal Churchmen 
is given it by the picture of the ideal minister of 
" Christe's Gospel," which always accompanies the 
burlesque. In the eighteenth century the license of 
satire goes much beyond this. In the early part 
of the century we find clerical satire observing to 
some extent a similar discrimination. The Tory par- 
son is libelled always with an ostentatious reserve of 
commendation for the more enlightened and liberal 
Hanoverian, the stanch maintainer of the Protestant 
succession. This is the tone of the "Independent 
Whig," one of the numerous weekly sheets called into 
being in imitation of the " Tatler." It was started 
in 1720 ; taking for its exclusive theme the clergy, 
whom it was its avowed object to abuse. A paper 
came out every Wednesday. It was not a newspaper, 



348 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

and does not deal in libel or personalities ; hardly ever 
mentioning a name, very rarely quoting a fact, but 
dilating in general terms upon clerical ignorance and 
bigotry. This dull and worthless trash not only had 
a considerable circulation at the time, but was re- 
printed, and passed through several editions in a 
collected form. The bishops talked of prohibiting it, 
but, on second thoughts, acted more wisely in taking 
no notice of it. The only part of the kingdom into 
which it could not find entrance was the Isle of Man, 
where the saintly Wilson combined with apostolic 
virtues much of the old episcopal claims over the 
consciences of his flock. The " Independent Whig," 
though manifestly written by a man of no religion, 
yet finds it necessary to keep up the appearance of 
encouraging the " better sort " of clergy, and affecting 
to despise only the political priests, the meddling 
chaplain, the preferment-hunter, the toper, who is 
notable at bowls, and dexterous at whisk. 

As we advance towards the middle of the century, 
and the French influence begins to mingle with pure 
English Deism, the spirit of contempt spreads till it 
involves all priests of all religions. The language 
now is, " The established clergy in every country are 
generally the greatest enemies to all kinds of reforma- 
tion, as they are generally the most narrow-minded 
and most worthless set of men in every country. 
Fortunately for the present times, the wings of cleri- 
cal power and influence are pretty close trimmed ; so 
that I do not think their opposition to the proposed 
reformations could be of any great consequeiice, more 
of the people being inclined to despise them than to 
follow them blindly." (Burgh, Political Disquisitions, 
1774.) It was no longer for their vices that the 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 349 

clergy were reviled ; for the philosopher now had 
come to understand that " their virtues were more 
dangerous " to society. Strictness of life did but in- 
crease the dislike with which the clergyman was 
regarded : his morality was but double-dyed hypoc- 
risy ; religious language from his mouth was method- 
istical cant. Nor did the orthodox attempt to struggle 
with this sentiment : they yielded to it, and adopted 
for their maxim of conduct, " Surtout point de zele." 
Their sermons and pamphlets were now directed 
against " Enthusiasm," which became the bugbear of 
that time. Every clergyman, who wished to retain 
any influence over the minds of his parishioners, was 
anxious to vindicate himself from all suspicion of en- 
thusiasm. When he had set himself right in this 
respect, he endeavored to do the same good office for 
the apostles. But, if he were not an '' enthusiast," 
he was an " impostor ; " for every clergyman of the 
Church had against him an antecedent presumption 
as a " priest." It was now well understood by all 
enlightened men, that the whole sacerdotal brood 
were but a set of impostors, who lived by deceiving 
the people, and who had invented religion for their 
own benefit. Natural religion needed no " priests " 
to uphold it : it was obvious to every understanding, 
and could maintain itself in the world without any 
confraternity sworn to the secret. 

Again came a change. As the Methodist move- 
ment gradually leavened the mass beneath, zeal came 
again into credit. The old Wickliffiite, or Puritan dis- 
tinction is revived between the " gospel-preachers " 
and the " dumb dogs." The antipathy to priests was 
no longer promiscuous. Popular indignation was re- 
served for the fox-hunter and the pluralist ; the Hophni 



350 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

and Phinehas generation ; the men who are described 
as " careless of dispensing the bread of life to their 
flocks, preaching a carnal and soul-benumbing moral- 
ity, and trafficking in the souls of men by receiving 
money for discharging the pastoral office in parishes 
where they did not so much as look on the faces of 
the people more than once a year." In the well- 
known satire of Cowper, it is no longer irreligious 
mocking at sacred things under pretence of a virtuous 
indigniation : it becomes again what it was before the 
Reformation, — an earnest feeling, a religious senti- 
ment, the moral sense of man ; Huss or Savonarola 
appealing to the written morality of the gospel against 
the practical immorality consecrated by the Church. 

Something, too, of the old anti-hierarchical feeling 
accompanies this revival of the influence of the in- 
ferior clergy ; a faint reflection of the bitter hatred 
which the Lollard had borne to pope and cardinal, or 
the Puritan to " Prelacy." The utility of the episco- 
pal and capitular dignities continued to be questioned 
long after the evangelical parish pastor had re-estab- 
lished himself in the affections of his flock, and 1832 
saw the cathedrals go down amid the general appro- 
bation of all classes. In the earlier half of the cen- 
tury, the reverse was the case. The boorish country 
parson was the man whose order was despised then, 
and his utility questioned. The Freethinkers them- 
selves could not deny that the bench and the stalls 
were graced by some whose wit, reputation, and 
learning would have made them considerable in any 
profession. The higher clergy had with them the 
town and the court : the country clergy sided with 
the squires. The mass of the clergy were not in sym- 
pathy, either politically or intellectually, with their 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 351 

ecclesiastical superiors. The Tory fox-hunter, in the 
" Freeholder " (No. 22), thinks " the neighboring shire 
very happy for having scarce a Presbyterian in it, ex- 
cept the bishop ; " while Hickes " thanks God that 
the main body of the clergy are in their hearts, Jaco- 
bites." The bishops of George the Second deserved 
the respect they met with. At no period in the his- 
tory of our Church has the ecclesiastical patronage of 
the crown been better directed than while it was 
secretly dispensed by Queen Caroline. For a brief 
period, liberality and cultivation of mind were pass- 
ports to promotion in the Church. Nor were politics 
a hinderance : the queen earnestly pressed an English 
see upon Bishop Wilson. The corruption which be- 
gan with the Duke of Newcastle (1746) gradually 
deepened in the subsequent reign, as political ortho- 
doxy and connection were made the tests, and the 
borough-holders divided the dignities of the Church 
among their adherents. 

Of an age so solid and practical, it was not to be 
expected that its theology and metaphysics would 
mount into the more remote spheres of abstraction. 
Their line of argument was, as has been seen, regu- 
lated by the necessity they laid themselves under of 
appealing to sound sense and common reason. But 
not only was their treatment of their topic popu- 
lar : the motive of their writings was an immediate 
practical necessity. Bishops and deans might be 
made for merit ; but it was not mere literary merit, 
classical scholarship, or university distinction. The 
Deistical controversy did not originate, like some 
other controversies which have made much noise in 
their time, in speculative fancy, in the leisure of the 
cloister or the college : it had a living practical in- 



852 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

terest in its complication with the questions of the 
day. The endeavor of the morahsts and divines of 
the period to rationalize religion was in fact an effort 
to preserve the practical principles of moral and relig- 
ious conduct for society. It was not an academical 
disputation, or a contest of wits for superiority, but a 
life-and-death struggle of religious and moral feeling 
to maintain itself. What they felt they had to con- 
tend against was moral depravity, and not theological 
error : they wrote less in the interest of truth than 
in that of virtue. A general relaxation of manners, 
in all classes of society, is universally affirmed to be 
characteristic of that time ; and theology and philos- 
ophy applied themselves to combat this. A striking 
instance of this is Bishop Berkeley, — the only meta- 
physical writer of the time, besides Locke, who has 
maintained a very high name in philosophical history. 
He forms a solitary — it might seem a singular — ex- 
ception to what has been said of the prosaic and un- 
metaphysical character of this moralizing age. The two 
peculiar metaphysical notions which are connected with 
Berkeley's name, and which, though he did not origi- 
nate, he propounded with a novelty and distinctness 
equal to originality, have always ranked as being on 
the extreme verge of rational speculation, if not actu- 
ally within the region of unfruitful paradox and meta- 
physical romance. These two memorable speculations, 
as propounded by Berkeley in the " Alciphron," come 
before us, not as a Utopian dream or an ingenious 
play of reason, but interwoven in a polemic against 
the prevailing unbelief. They are made to bend to a 
most practical purpose, and are Berkeley's contribu- 
tion to the Deistical controversy. The character of 
the man, too, was more in harmony with the plain 



IN ENGLAND, 1633-1750. 353 

utilitarian spirit of his time than with his own refining 
intellect. He was not a closet-thinker, like his master 
Malebranche, but a man of the world and of society, 
inquisitive and well informed in many branches of 
practical science. Practical schemes, social and phil- 
anthropic, occupied his mind more than abstract 
thinking. In pushing the received metaphysical creed 
to its paradoxical consequences, as much as in pre- 
scribing " tar-water," he was thinking only of an im- 
mediate " benefit to mankind." He seems to have 
thought nothing of his argument until he had brought 
it to bear on the practical question of the day. 

Were the " corruption of manners " merely the com- 
plaint of one party, or set of writers, a cry of factious 
Puritanism, or of men who were at war with society, 
like the Nonjuring clergy, or of a few isolated indi- 
viduals of superior piety, like William Law, it would 
be easily explicable. The " world," at all times, 
and in all countries, can be described with truth 
as " lying in wickedness ; " and the rebuke of the 
preacher of righteousness is equally needed in every 
age. There cannot be a darker picture than that 
drawn, by the Fathers of the third century of the 
morals of the Christians in their time. (See passages 
in Jewel's " Apology.") The rigorous moralist, Hea- 
then or Christian, can always point in sharp contrast 
the vices and the belief of mankind. But, after 
making every allowance for the exaggeration of re- 
ligious rhetoric and the querulousness of defeated 
parties there seems to remain some real evidence for 
ascribing to that age a more than usual moral license, 
and contempt of external restraints. It is the con- 
current testimony of men of all parties ; it is the 
general strain of the most sensible and worldly di- 

w 



354 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

vines ; prosperous men, who lived with this very world 
they censure, — men whose code of morals was not 
large, nor their standard exacting. To attempt the 
inquiry, what specific evils were meant by the general 
expressions, " decay of religion " and " corruption of 
manners," the stereotype phrases of the time, is not 
within the limits of this paper. No historian, as far 
as I am aware, has attempted this examination : all 
liave been content to render, without valuation, the 
cliargcs as they find them. I shall content myself 
with producing here one statement of contemporary 
opinion on this point ; for which purpose I select a 
layman, David Hartley (^Observations on Man, vol. ii. 
p. 441) : _ 

" There are six things which seem more especially to threaten 
ruin and dissolution to the present States of Christendom. 

" 1st, The great growth of atheism and infidelity, particularly 
amongst the governing parts of these States. 

" 2d, The open and abandoned lewdness to which great numbers 
of both sexes, especially in the high ranks of life, have given them- 
selves up. 

" 3d, The sordid and avowed self-interest which is almost the 
sole motive of action in those who are concerned in the adminis- 
tration of public affairs. 

" 4th, The licentiousness and contempt of every kind of au- 
thority, divine or human, which is so notorious in inferiors of all 
ranks. 

" 5th, The great worldly-mindedness of the clergy, and their 
gross neglect in the discharge of their proper functions. 

" Gth, The carelessness and infatuation of parents and magis- 
trates, with respect to the education of youth, and the consequent 
early corruption of the rising generation. 

" All these things have evident mutual connections and influ- 
ences ; and as they all seem likely to increase from time to time, 
so it can scarce be doubted by a considerate man, whether he be a 
religious one or no, but that they will, sooner or later, bring on 
a total dissolution of all the forms of government that subsist at 
present in the Christian countries of Europe." 

Though there is this entire unanimity as to the fact 
of the prevailing corruption, there is the greatest 
diversity of opinion as to its cause. Each party is 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 355 

found in turn attributing it to the neglect or disbelief 
of the abstract propositions in which its own partic- 
ular creed is expressed. The Nonjurors and High- 
Churchmen attribute it to the Toleration Act and the 
latitudinarianism allowed in high places. One of the 
very popular pamphlets of the year IT 21, was a fast- 
sermon preached before the Lord Mayor by Edmund 
Massey, in which he enumerates the evils of the time, 
and affirms that they " are justly chargeable upon the 
corrupt explication of those words of our Saviour, 
' My kingdom is not of this world ; ' " i. e. upon Hoad- 
ly's celebrated sermon. The latitudinarian clergy 
divide the blame between the Freethinkers and the 
Nonjurors. The Freethinkers point to the hypocrisy 
of the clergy, who, they say, lost all credit with the 
people by havmg preached " passive obedience " up 
to 1688, and then suddenly finding out that it was not 
a scriptural truth. The Nonconformists lay it to the 
enforcement of conformity, and unscriptural terms of 
communion ; while the Catholics rejoice to see in it 
the Protestant Reformation at last bearing its natural 
fruit. Warburton characteristically attributes it to 
the bestowal of " preferment" by the Walpole admin- 
istration, (Dedication to Lord Mansfield, Works, ii. 
268.) The power of preferment was not under-esti- 
mated then. George XL maintained to the last, that 
the growth of Methodism was entirely owing to min- 
isters not having listened to his advice, and " made 
Whitefield a bishop." Lastly, that every one may 
have his say, a professor of moral philosophy in our 
day is found attributing the same facts to the preva- 
lence of " that low view of morality which rests its 
rules upon consequences merely." 



366 TENDENCIES OF EELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

" The reverence which," says Dr. Whewell, " handed down by 
the traditions of ages of moral and religious teaching, had hitherto 
protected the accustomed forms of moral good, Avas gradually re- 
moved. Vice and crime and sin ceased to be words that terrified 
the popular speculator. Virtue and goodness and purity were no 
longer things which he looked up to with mute respect. He ven- 
tured to lay a sacrilegious hand even upon these hallowed shapes. 
He saw, that, when this had been dared by audacious theorists, 
those objects, so long venerated, seemed to have no power of pun- 
ishing the bold intruder. There was a scene like that which oc- 
curi-ed when the Barbarians broke into the Eternal City. At first, 
in spite of themselves, they were awed by the divine aspect of the 
ancient magistrates ; but, when once their leader had smitten one 
of these venerable figures with impunity, the coarse and violent 
mob rushed onwards, and exultingly mingled all in one common 
destruction." — Moral Philosophy in England, p. 79. 

The actual sequence of cause and effect seems, if it 
be not presumptuous to say so, to be as nearly as pos- 
sible inverted in this eloquent statement. The licen- 
tiousness of talk and manners was not produced by 
the moral doctrines promulgated ; but the doctrine of 
moral consequences was had recourse to by the divines 
and moralists, as the most likely remedy of the pre- 
vailing licentiousness. It was an attempt, well meant 
but not successful, to arrest the wanton proceedings 
of " the coarse and violent mob." Good men saw 
with alarm, almost with despair, that what they said 
in the obsolete language of religious teaching was not 
listened to, and tried to address the age in plain and 
unmistakable terms. The new theory of consequences 
was not introduced by '' men of leisure," to supplant 
and overthrow a nobler and purer view of religion 
and morality : it was a plain fact of religion, stated in 
plain language, in the hope of deterring the wicked 
from his wickedness. It was the address of the Old 
Testament prophet, " Why will ye die, house of 
Israel ? " That there is a God and moral Governor, 
and that obedience to his commands is necessary to 
secure our interests in this world and the next, — if 



m ENGLAND, 16S8-1750. 357 

any form of rational belief can control the actions of 
a rational being, it is surely this. On the rationalist 
hypotliesis, the morality of consequences ought to 
produce the most salutary effects on the general be- 
havior of mankind. This obligation of obedience, the 
appeal to our desire of our own welfare, was the sub- 
stance of the practical teaching of the age. It was 
stated with gTcat cogency of reasoning, and enforced 
with every variety of illustration. Put its proof at 
the lowest ; let it be granted that they did not suc- 
ceed in removing all the objections of the Deistical 
writers : it must, at least, be allowed that they showed, 
to the satisfaction of all prudent and thinking men, 
that it was safer to believe Christianity true than not. 
The obligation to practice in point of prudence was as 
perfect as though the proof had been demonstrative. 
And what was the surprising result ? That, the more 
they demonstrated, the less people believed. As the 
proof of morality was elaborated and strengthened, 
the more it was disregarded, the more ungodliness 
and profaneness flourished and grew. This is cer- 
tainly not what we should antecedently expect. If, 
as Dr. Whewell assumes, and the whole doctrinaire 
school with him, the speculative belief of an age 
determines its moral cliaracter, that should be the 
purest epoch where the morality of consequences is 
placed in the strongest light ; when it is most con- 
vincingly set before men that their present and future 
welfare depends on liow they act ; that " all we enjoy, 
and great part of what we suffer, is placed in our own 
hands." 

Experience, however, the testimony of history, dis- 
plays to us a result the very reverse. The experiment 
of the eighteenth century may surely be considered 



358 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

as a decisive one on this point. The failure of a pru- 
dential system of ethics as a restraining force upon 
society was perceived, or felt in the way of reaction, by 
the Evangelical and Methodist generation of teachers 
who succeeded the Hanoverian divines. So far, their 
perception was just. They went on to infer, that, 
because the circulation of one system of belief had 
been inefficacious, they should try the eifect of in- 
culcating a set of truths as widely remote from the 
former as possible. Because legal preaching, as they 
phrased it, had failed, they would essay gospel preach- 
ing. The preaching of justification by works had not 
the power to check wickedness : therefore justification 
by faith, the doctrine of the Reformation, was the only 
saving truth. This is not meant as a complete account 
of the origin of the Evangelical school. It is only 
one point of view, — that point which connects the 
school with the general line of thought this paper has 
been pursuing. Their doctrine of conversion by su- 
pernatural influence must on no account be forgotten. 
Yet it appears that they thought that the channel of 
this supernatural influence was, in some way or other, 
preaching ; preaching, too, not as rhetoric, but as 
the annunciation of a specific doctrine, — the gospel. 
They certainly insisted on " the heart " being touched, 
and that the Spirit only had the power savingly to 
affect the heart ; but they acted as though this were 
done by an appeal to the reason, and scornfully rejected 
the idea of religious education. 

It should also be remarked, that even the divines of 
the Hanoverian school were not wholly blind to some 
flaw in their theory, and to the practical efficacy of 
their doctrine. Not that they underrated the force 
of their demonstrations. As has been already said, 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 359 

the greater part of them overestimated their convin- 
cingness ; but they could not but see that they did not, 
in fact, convince. Wlien this was forced upon their 
observation ; when they perceived that an a priori dem- 
onstration of religion might be placed before a man, 
and tliat he did not see its force, — then, inconsequent 
with their own theory, they had recourse to the 
notion of moral culpability. If a person refused to 
admit the evidence for revelation, it was because he 
did not examine it with a dispassionate mind. His 
understanding was biased by his wishes ; some illicit 
passion he was resolved on gratifying, but which 
prudence, forsooth, woiild not have allowed him to 
gratify, so long as he continued to believe in a future 
judgment. The wish that there ivere no God suggested 
the thought that there is not. Speculative unbelief 
is thus asserted to be a consequence of a bad heart : 
it is the grounds upon which we endeavor to prove 
to ourselves and others that the indulgence of our 
passions is consistent with a rational prudence. As 
levelled against an individual opponent, this is a poor 
controversial shift. Many of the Deists were men of 
worth and probity : of none of them is anything known 
which would make them worse men than the average 
of their class in life. Mr. Chichester (" Deism com- 
pared with Christianity," 1821, vol. iii. p. 220) says, 
" Tindal was infamous for vice in general ; " but I 
have not been able to trace his authority for the 
assertion. As an imputation, not against individual 
unbelievers, but against the competency of reason in 
general, it may be true, but it is quite inconsistent with 
the general hypothesis of the school of reasoners who 
brought it. If reason be liable to an influence which 
warps it, then there is required some force which 



3G0 TENDENCIES OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT 

shall keep this mfliience under, and reason alone is no 
longer the all-sufficient judge of truth. In this way 
we should be forced back to the old orthodox doctrine 
of the chronic impotence of reason, superinduced upon 
it by the Fall ; a doctrine which the reigning ortho- 
doxy had tacitly renounced. 

In the Catholic theory, the feebleness of Reason is 
met half way, and made good by the authority of the 
Church. When the Protestants threw off this author- 
ity, they did not assign to Reason what they took 
from the Church, but to Scripture. Calvin did not 
shrink from "Baying that Scripture " shone sufficiently 
by its own light." As long as this could be kept to, 
the Protestant theory of belief was whole and sound ; 
at least, it was as sound as the Catholic. In both, 
Reason, aided by spiritual illumination, performs the 
subordinate function of recognizing the supreme au- 
thority of the Church and of the Bible respectively. 
Time, learned controversy, and abatement of zeal, 
drove the Protestants generally from the hardy but 
irrational assertion of Calvin. Every foot of ground 
that Scripture lost was gained by one or other of the 
three substitutes, — Church-authority, the Spirit, or 
Reason. Church-authority was essayed by the Lau- 
dian divines, but was soon found untenable ; for, on 
that footing, it was found impossible to justify the 
Reformation and the breach with Rome. The Spirit 
then came into favor along with Independency. But 
it was still more quickly discovered, that, on such a 
basis, only discord and disunion could be reared. 
There remained to be tried Common Reason, carefully 
distinguished from recondite learning, and not based 
on metaphysical assumptions. To apply this instru- 
ment to the contents of revelation was the occupation 



IN ENGLAND, 1688-1750. 361 

of the early half of the eighteenth century ; with what 
success has been seen. In the latter part of the cen- 
tury, the same Common Reason was applied to the 
external evidences. But here the method fails in a 
first requisite, — universality ; for even the shallowest 
array of historical proof requires some book-learning 
to apprehend. Further than this, the Lardner and 
Paley school could not complete their proof satisfacto- 
rily, inasmuch as the materials for the investigation 
of the first and second centuries of the Christian era 
were not at hand. 

Such appears to be the past history of the Theory 
of Belief in the Church of England. Wlioever would 
take the religious literature of the present day as a 
whole, and endeavor to make out clearly on what basis 
revelation is supposed by it to rest, whether on Author- 
ity, on the Inward Light, on Reason, on self-evidencing 
Scripture, or on the combination of the four, or some 
of them, and in what proportions, would probably find 
that he had undertaken a perplexing, but not alto- 
gether profitless inquiry. 



16 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OE SCRIPTURE. 

By benjamin JOWETT, M. A. 

IT is a strange though famiUar fact, that great dif- 
ferences of opinion exist respecting the interpre- 
tation of Scripture. All Christians receive the Old 
and New Testament as sacred wi-itings ; but they are 
not agreed about the meaning which they attribute 
to them. The book itself remains as at the first : the 
commentators seem rather to reflect the changing at- 
mosphere of the world or of the Church. Different 
individuals, or bodies of Christians, have a different 
point of view, to which their interpretation is nar- 
rowed, or made to conform. It is assumed as natural 
and necessary, that the same words will present one 
idea to the mind of the Protestant, another to the 
Roman Catholic ; one meaning to the German, another 
to the English interpreter. The Ultramontane or An- 
glican divine is not supposed to be impartial in his 
treatment of passages which afford an apparent foun- 
dation for the doctrine of purgatory or the primacy 
of St. Peter on the one hand ; or the three orders of 
clergy, and the divine origin of episcopacy, on the 
other. It is a received view with many, that the 
meaning of the Bible is to be defined by that of 
the Prayer-book ; while there are others who inter- 



ON THE IXTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTUEE. 363 

pret "the Bible, and the Bible only," with a silent 
reference to the traditions of the Reformation. Phil- 
osophical differences are in the background, into which 
the differences about Scripture also resolve themselves. 
They seem to run up at last into a difference of opin- 
ion respecting revelation itself ; whether given beside 
the human faculties or through them ; whether an 
interruption of the laws of nature, or their perfection 
and fulfilment. 

This effort to pull the authority of Scripture in 
different directions is not peculiar to our own day: 
the same phenomenon appears m the past history of 
the Church. At the Reformation, in the Nicene or 
Pelagian times, the New Testament was the ground 
over which men fought : it might also be compared to 
the armory which furnished them with weapons. Op- 
posite aspects of the truth which it contains were 
appropriated by different sides. "Justified by faith 
without works," and "justified by faith as well as 
works," are equally Scriptural expressions : the one 
has become the formula of Protestants ; the other, of 
Roman Catholics. The fifth and ninth chapters of 
the Romans, single verses such as 1 Cor. iii. 15, 
John iii. 3, still bear traces of many a life-long strife 
in the pages of commentators. The difference of in- 
terpretation which prevails among ourselves is partly 
traditional ; that is to say, inherited from the contro- 
versies of former ages. The use made of Scripture 
by Fathers of the Church, as well as by Luther and 
Calvin, affects our idea of its meaning at the present 
hour. 

Another cause of the multitude of interpretations 
is the growth or progress of the human mind itself. 
Modes of interpreting vary as time goes on : they 



364 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

partake of the geneT^al state of literature or knowl- 
edge. It has not been easily or at once that mankind 
have learned to realize the character of sacred writ- 
ings : they seem almost necessarily to veil themselves 
from human eyes as circumstances change. It is the 
old age of the world only that has at length under- 
stood its childhood. (Or rather, perhaps, is beginning 
to understand it, and learning to make allowance for 
its own deficiency of knowledge ; for the infancy of 
the human race, as of the individual, affords but few 
indications of the workings of the mind within.) 
More often than we suppose, the great sayings and 
doings upon the earth, " thoughts that breathe, and 
w^ords that burn," are lost in a sort of chaos to the 
apprehension of those that come after. Much of past 
history is dimly seen, and receives only a conventional 
interpretation, even when the memorials of it remain. 
There is a time at which the freshness of early litera- 
ture is lost : mankind have turned rhetoricians, and no 
longer write or feel in the spirit which created it. In 
this unimaginative period, in which sacred or ancient 
w^ritings are partially unintelligible, many methods 
have been taken at different times to adapt the ideas 
of the past to the wants of the present. One age has 
wandered into the flowery paths of allegory, — 

'* In pious meditation, fancy-fed." 

Another has straitened the liberty of the gospel by a 
rigid application of logic : the former being a method 
which was at first more naturally applied to the Old 
Testament ; the latter, to the New. Botli methods of 
interpretation, the mystical and logical, as they may be 
termed, have been practised on the Vedas and the Ko- 
ran, as well as on the Jewish and Cliristian Scriptures ; 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 365 

the true glory and note of divinity in these latter 
being, not that they have hidden, mysterious, or double 
meanings, but a simple and universal one, which is 
beyond them, and will survive them. Since the re- 
vival of literature, interpreters have not unfrequently 
fallen into error of another kind, from a pedantic and 
misplaced use of classical learning ; the minute exam- 
ination of words often withdrawing the mind from 
more important matters. A tendency may be observed 
within the last century to clothe systems of philosophy 
in the phraseology of Scripture. But new wine can- 
not thus be put " into old bottles." Though roughly 
distinguishable by different ages, these modes or ten- 
dencies also exist together : the remains of all of them 
may be remarked in some of the popular commentaries 
of our own day. 

More common than any of these methods, and not 
peculiar to any age, is that which may be called, by 
way of distinction, the rhetorical one. The tendency 
to exaggerate or amplify the meaning of simple words 
for the sake of edification may indeed have a practical 
use in sermons, the object of which is to awaken not 
so much the intellect as the heart and conscience. 
Spiritual food, like natural, may require to be of a 
certain bulk to nourish the human mind. But this 
'' tendency to edification " has had an unfortunate 
influence on the interpretation of Scripture : for the 
preacher almost necessarily oversteps the limits of 
actual knowledge ; his feelings overflow with the sub- 
ject. Even if he have the power, he has seldom the 
time for accurate thought or inquiry ; and in the 
course of years spent in writing, perhaps, without 
study, he is apt to persuade himself, if not others, of 
the truth of his own repetitions. The trivial consid- 



366 ON THE INTERPKETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

eration of making a discourse of sufficient length is 
often a reason why he overlays the words of Christ 
and his apostles with commonplaces. The meaning 
of the text is not always the object which he has in 
view, but some moral or religious lesson which he has 
found it necessary to append to it ; some cause which 
he is pleading, some error of the day which he has to 
combat. And while in some passage he hardly dares 
to trust himself with the full force of Scripture, (Matt. 
V. 34 ; ix. 13 ; xix. 21 ; Acts v. 29,) in others he 
extracts more from words than they really imply 
(Matt. xxii. 21 ; xxviii. 20 ; Rom. xiii. 1, <fec.) ; being 
more eager to guard against the abuse of some pre- 
cept than to enforce it; attenuating or adapting the 
utterance of prophecy to the requirements or to the 
measure of modern times. Any one who has ever 
written sermons is aware how hard it is to apply Scrip- 
ture to the wants of his hearers, and at the same time 
to preserve its meaning. 

The phenomenon which has been described in the 
preceding pages is so familiar, and yet so extraordi- 
nary, that it requires an effort of thought to appreciate 
its true nature. We do not at once see the absurdity 
of the same words having many senses, or free our 
minds from the illusion that the apostle or evangelist 
must have written with a reference to the creeds or 
controversies or circumstances of other times. Let 
it be considered, then, that this extreme variety of 
interpretation is found to exist in the case of no other 
book, but of the Scriptures only. Other writings are 
preserved to us in dead languages, — Greek, Latin, 
Oriental ; some of them in fragments, all of them orig- 
inally in manuscript. It is true that difficulties arise 
in the explanation of these writings, especially in the 



ON THE INTERPKETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 36T 

most ancient, from our imperfect acquaintance with 
the meaning of words, or the defectiveness of copies, 
or the want of some historical or geographical infor- 
mation which is required to present an event or char- 
acter in its true bearing. In comparison with tlie 
wealth and light of modern literature, our knowledge 
of Greek classical authors, for example, may be called 
imperfect and shadowy. Some of them have another 
sort of difl&culty, arising from subtlety or abruptness 
in the use of language : in lyric poetry especially, and 
some of the earlier prose, the greatness of the thought 
struggles with the stammering lips. It may be ob- 
served, that all these difficulties occur also in Scrip- 
ture : they are found equally in sacred and profane 
literature. But the meaning of classical authors is 
known with comparative certainty, and the interpreta- 
tion of them seems to rest on a scientific basis. It is 
not, therefore, to philological or historical difficulties 
that the greater part of the uncertainty in the interpre- 
tation of Scripture is to be attributed. No ignorance 
of Hebrew or Greek is sufficient to account for it. 
Even the Yedas and the Zendavesta, though beset by 
obscurities of language probably greater than are 
found in any portion of the Bible, are interpreted, at 
least by European scholars, according to fixed rules, 
and beginning to be clearly understood. 

To bring the parallel home, let us imagine the re- 
mains of some well-known Greek author, as Plato or 
Sophocles, receiving the same treatment at the hands 
of the world which the Scriptures have experienced. 
The text of such an author, when first printed by 
Aldus or Stephens, would be gathered from the im- 
perfect or miswritten copies which fell in the way of 
the editors : after a while, older and better manu- 



ON THE INTEKPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

scripts come to light, and the power of using and esti- 
mating the value of manuscripts is greatly improved. 
We may suppose, further, that the readings of these 
older copies do not always conform to some received 
canons of criticism. Up to the year 1550 or 1624, al- 
terations, often proceeding on no principle, have been 
introduced into the text. But now a stand is made : 
an edition which appeared at the latter of the two dates 
just mentioned is invested with authority ; this author- 
ized text is a piece de resistance against innovation. 
Many reasons are given why it is better to have bad 
readings to which the world is accustomed, than good 
ones which are novel and strange ; why the later man- 
uscripts of Plato or Sophocles are often to be preferred 
to earlier ones ; why it is useless to remove imperfec- 
tions where perfect accuracy is not to be attained. A 
fear of disturbing the critical canons which have come 
down from former ages, is, however, suspected to be 
one reason for the opposition ; and custom and prej- 
udice, and the nicety of the subject, and all the ar- 
guments which are intelligible to the many against 
the truth, which is intelligible only to the few, are 
thrown into the scale to preserve the works of Plato 
or Sophocles as nearly as possible in the received 
text. 

Leaving the text, we proceed to interpret and trans- 
late. The meaning of Greek words is known with 
tolerable certainty, and the grammar of the Greek 
language has been minutely analyzed both in ancient 
and modern times. Yet the interpretation of Sopho- 
cles is tentative and uncertain : it seems to vary from 
age to age. To some, the great tragedian has appeared 
to embody in his choruses certain theological or moral 
ideas of his own age or country : there are others who 



ON THE INTEKPRETATION OF SCEIPTURE. 369 

find there an allegory of the Christian religion, or 
of the history of modern Europe. Several schools of 
critics have commented on his works. To the English- 
man he has presented one meaning, to the Frenchman 
another, to the German a third. The interpretations 
have also differed with the philosophical systems 
which the interpreters espoused. To one, the same 
words have appeared to bear a moral, to another a 
symbohcal meaning ; a third is determined wholly by 
the authority of old commentators ; while there is a 
disposition to condemn the scholar who seeks to inter- 
pret Sophocles from himself only, and with reference 
to the ideas and beliefs of the age in which he lived. 
And the error of such an one is attributed not only to 
some intellectual, but even to a moral obliquity, which 
prevents his seeing the true meaning. 

It would be tedious to follow into details the absurd- 
ity which has been supposed. By such methods, it 
would be truly said that Sophocles or Plato may be 
made to mean anything. It would seem as if some 
" Novum Organum " were needed to lay down rules 
of interpretation for ancient literature. Still one 
other supposition has to be introduced, which will 
appear, perhaps, more extravagant than any which 
have preceded. Conceive, then, that these modes of 
interpreting Sophocles had existed for ages ; that 
great institutions and interests had become interwoven 
with them, and, in some degree, even the honor of 
nations and churches: is it too much to say, that, 
in such a case, they would be changed with difficulty, 
and that they would continue to be maintained long 
after critics and philosophers had seen that they were 
indefensible ? 

No one who has a Christian feeling would place 
16* X 



370 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

classical on a level with sacred literature : and there 
are other particulars in which the preceding compar- 
ison fails ; as, for example, the style and subject. 
But, however diiferent the subject, although the inter- 
pretation of Scripture requires " a vision and faculty 
divine," or at least a moral and religious interest 
which is not needed in the study of a Greek poet 
or philosopher; yet, in what may be termed the ex- 
ternals of interpretation, — that is to say, the meaning 
of words, the connection of sentences, the settlement 
of the text, the evidence of facts, — the same rules 
apply to the Old and New Testaments as to other 
books. And the figure is no exaggeration of the err- 
ing fancy of men in the use of Scripture, or of the 
tenacity with which they cling to the interpretations 
of other times, or of the arguments by which they 
maintain them. All the resources of knowledge may 
be turned into a means, not of discovering the true 
rendering, but of upholding a received one. Gram- 
mar appears to start from an independent point of 
view ; yet inquires into the use of the article or the 
preposition have been observed to wind round into a 
defence of some doctrine. Rhetoric often magnifies 
its own want of taste into the design of inspiration. 
Logic (that other mode of rhetoric) is apt to lend itself 
to the illusion, by stating erroneous explanations with 
a clearness which is mistaken for truth. " Metaphysi- 
cal aid " carries away the common understanding into 
a region where it must blindly follow. Learning 
obscures as well as illustrates : it heaps up chaff 
when there is no more wheat. These are some of 
the ways in which the sense of Scripture has become 
confused, by the help of tradition, in the course of 
ages, under a load of commentators. 



ON THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 371 

The book itself remains, as at the first, Tinchanged 
amid the changing interpretations of it. The office 
of the interpreter is, not to add another, but to recover 
the original one ; the meaning, that is, of the words 
as they first struck on the ears or flashed before the 
eyes of those who heard and read them. He has to 
transfer himself to another age ; to imagine that he 
is a disciple of Christ or Paul ; to disengage himself 
from all that follows. The history of Christendom 
is nothing to him ; but only the scene at Galilee or 
Jerusalem, the handful of believers who gathered 
themselves together at Ephesus or Corinth or Rome. 
His eye is fixed on the form of one like the Son of 
man, or of the prophet who was girded with a gar- 
ment of camel's hair, or of the apostle who had a 
thorn in the flesh. The greatness of the Roman Em- 
pire is nothing to him : it is an inner, not an outer 
world that he is striving to restore. All the after- 
thoughts of theology are nothing to him : they are 
not the true lights which light him in difficult places. 
His concern is with a book, in which, as in other 
ancient writings, are some things of which we are 
ignorant ; which defect of our knowledge cannot, 
however, be supplied by the conjectures of fathers 
or divines. The simple words of that book he tries 
to preserve absolutely pure from the refinements or 
distinctions of later times. He acknowledges that 
they are fragmentary ; and would suspect himself, if 
out of fragments he were able to create a well-rounded 
system or a continuous history. The greater part 
of his learning is a knowledge of the text itself: 
he has no delight in the voluminous literature which 
has overgrown it. He has no theory of interpreta- 
tion : a few rules guarding against common errors are 



372 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

enough for him. His object is to read Scripture, like 
any other book, with a real interest, and not merely a 
conventional one. He wants to be able to open his 
eyes, and to see or imagine things as they truly are. 

Nothing would be more likely to restore a natural 
feeling on this subject than a history of the interpreta- 
tion of Scripture. It would take us back to the be- 
ginning ; it would present in one view the causes 
which have darkened the meaning of words in the 
course of ages ; it would clear away the remains of 
dogmas, systems, controversies, which are incrusted 
upon them. It would show us the " erring fancy " of 
interpreters assuming sometimes to have the Spirit 
of God himself, yet unable to pass beyond the limits of 
their own age, and with a judgment often biased by 
party. Great names there have been among them, — 
names of men who may be reckoned also among the 
benefactors of the human race ; yet comparatively 
few who have understood the thoughts of other times, 
or who have bent their minds to " interrogate " the 
meaning of words. Such a work would enable us to 
separate the elements of doctrine and tradition with 
which the meaning of Scripture is encumbered in our 
own day. It would mark the different epochs of in- 
terpretation from the time when the living word 
was in process of becoming a book to Origen and 
Tertullian, from Origen to Jerome and Augustine, 
from Jerome and Augustine to Abelard and Aquinas ; 
again making a new beginning with the revival of 
literature, from Erasmus, the father of biblical criti- 
cism in more recent times, with Calvin and Beza for 
his immediate successors, through Grotius and Ham- 
mond, down to De Wette and Meier, our own con- 
temporaries. We should see how the mystical in- 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 373 

terpretation of Scripture originated in the Alexan- 
drian age ; how it blended with the logical and 
rhetorical ; how both received weight and currency 
from their use in support of the claims and teaching 
of the Church. We should notice how the " new 
learning " of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
gradually awakened the critical faculty in the study 
of the sacred writings ; how biblical criticism has 
slowly but surely followed in the track of philological 
and historical (not without a remoter influence exer- 
cised upon it also by natural science) ; how, too, the 
form of the scholastic hterature, and even of notes on 
the classics, insensibly communicated itself to com- 
mentaries on Scripture. We should see how the word 
" inspiration," from being used in a general way to 
express what may be called the prophetic spirit of 
Scripture, has passed, within the last two centuries, 
into a sort of technical term ; how, in other instances, 
the practice or feeling of earlier ages has been hol- 
lowed out into the theory or system of later ones. 
We should observe how the popular explanations of 
prophecy, as in Heathen (Thucyd. ii. 54), so also in 
Christian times, had adapted themselves to the cir- 
cumstances of mankind. We might remark, that in 
our own country, and in the present generation espe- 
cially, the interpretation of Scripture had assumed an 
apologetic character, as though making an effort to 
defend itself against some supposed inroad of science 
and criticism ; while among German commentators 
there is, for the first time in the history of the world, 
an approach to agreement and certainty. For exam- 
ple, the diversity among German writers on prophecy 
is far less than among English ones. That is a new 
phenomenon which has to be acknowledged. More 



374 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

than any other subject of human knowledge, biblical 
criticism has hung to the past : it has been hitherto 
found truer to the traditions of the Church than to 
the words of Christ. It has made, however, two 
great steps onward, — at the time of the Reformation 
and in our day. The diffusion of a critical spirit in 
history and literature is affecting the criticism of 
the Bible in our own day, in a manner not unlike the 
burst of intellectual life in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries. Educated persons are beginning to ask, 
not what Scripture may be made to mean, but what it 
does. And it is no exaggeration to say, that he who, 
in the present state of knowledge, will confine himself 
to the plain meaning of words and the study of their 
context, may know more of the original spirit and 
intention of the authors of the New Testament than 
all the controversial writers of former ages put to- 
gether. 

Such a history would be of great value to philosophy 
as well as to theology : it would be the history of the 
human mind in one of its most remarkable manifesta- 
tions. For ages which are not original show their 
character in the interpretation of ancient writings. 
Creating nothing, and incapable of that effort of imagi- 
nation which is required in a true criticism of the 
past, they read and explain the thoughts of former 
times by the conventional modes of their own. Such 
a history would form a kind of preface or prolegomena 
to the study of Scripture. Like the history of sci- 
ence, it would save many a useless toil ; it would 
indicate the uncertainties on which it is not worth 
while to speculate further ; the bypaths or labyrinths 
in which men lose themselves ; the mines that are 
already worked out. He who reflects on the multi- 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 375 

tude of explanations which already exist of the '- num- 
ber of the beast," " the two witnesses," " the little 
horn," " the man of sin ; " who observes the manner 
in which these explanations have varied with the po- 
litical movements of our own time, — will be unwill- 
ing to devote himself to a method of inquiry in which 
there is so little appearance of certainty or progress. 
These interpretations would destroy one another, if 
they were all placed side by side in a tabular analysis. 
It is an instructive fact, which may be mentioned in 
passing, that Joseph Mede, the greatest authority on 
this subject, twice fixed the end of the world in the 
last century, and once during his own lifetime. In 
like manner, he who notices the circumstance that 
the explanations of the first chapter of Genesis have 
slowly changed, and, as it were, retreated before the 
advance of geology, will be unwilling to add another 
to the spurious reconcilements of science and revela- 
tion. Or, to take an example of another kind, the 
Protestant divine, who perceives that the types and 
figures of the Old Testament are employed by Roman 
Catholics in support of the tenets of their church, 
will be careful not to use weapons which it is impos- 
sible to guide, and which may with equal force be 
turned against himself. Those who have handled 
them on the Protestant side have before now fallen 
victims to them ; not observing, as they fell, that it 
was by their own hand. 

Much of the uncertainty which prevails in the in- 
terpretation of Scripture arises out of party efibrts to 
wrest its meaning to different sides. There are, how- 
ever, deeper reasons which have hindered the natural 
meaning of the text from immediately and universally 
prevaihng. One of these is the unsettlement of many 



876 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

questions which have an important but indirect bear- 
ing on this subject. Some of these questions veil 
themselves in ambiguous terms, and no one likes to 
draw them out of their hiding-place into the light of 
day. In natural science, it is felt to be useless to build 
on assumptions ; in history, we look with suspicion on 
a priori ideas of what ought to have been ; in mathe- 
matics, when a step is wrong, we pull the house down 
until we reach the point at which the error is discov- 
ered. But in theology it is otherwise : there the 
tendency has been to conceal the unsoundness of 
the foundation under the fairness and loftiness of the 
superstructure. It has been thought safer to allow 
arguments to stand, which, although fallacious, have 
been on the right side, than to point out their defects ; 
and thus many principles have imperceptibly grown 
up which have overridden facts. No one would inter- 
pret Scripture, as many do, but for certain previous 
suppositions with which we come to the perusal of it. 
" Tiicre can be no error in the word of God : " there- 
fore the discrepancies in the books of Kings and 
Chronicles are only apparent, or may be attributed to 
differences in the copies. " It is a thousand times 
more likely that the interpreter should err than the 
inspired writer." For a like reason, the failure of a 
prophecy is never admitted, in spite of Scripture and 
of history (Jer. xxxvi. 30 ; Isa. xxiii. ; Amos vii. 
10-17) : the mention of a name later than the sup 
posed age of the prophet is not allowed, as in othei 
writings, to be taken in evidence of the date. (Isa. 
xlv. 1.) The accuracy of the Old Testament is meas- 
ured, not by the standard of primeval history, but of 
a modern critical one, which, contrary to all probabil- 
ity, is supposed to be attained : this arbitrary standard 



ON THE INTERPKETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 377 

once assumed, it becomes a point of honor or of faith 
to defend every name, date, place, which occurs. Or, 
to take another class of questions, it is said that " the 
various theories of the origin of the three first Gospels 
are all equally unknown to the Holy Catholic Church ; " 
or, as another writer of a different school expresses 
himself, " they tend to sap the inspiration of the New 
Testament." Again : the language in which our Sav- 
iour speaks of his own union with the Father is inter- 
preted by the language of the creeds. Those who 
remonstrate against double senses, allegorical interpre- 
tations, forced reconcilements, find themselves met by 
a sort of presupposition that " God speaks not as man 
speaks." The limitation of the human faculties is con- 
fusedly appealed to as a reason for abstaining from in- 
vestigations which are quite within their limits. The 
suspicion of Deism, or perhaps of Atheism, awaits 
inquiry. By such fears a good man refuses to be 
influenced ; a philosophical mind is apt to cast them 
aside with too much bitterness. It is better to close 
the book, than to read it under conditions of thought 
which are imposed from without. Whether those 
conditions of thought are the traditions of the Church, 
or the opinions of the religious world, — Catholic or 
Protestant, — makes no difference : they are incon- 
sistent with the freedom of the truth and the moral 
character of the gospel. It becomes necessary, there- 
fore, to examine briefly some of those prior questions 
which lie in the way of a reasonable criticism. 
_ § 2. ^ 
Among these previous questions, that which first 
presents itself is the one already alluded to, — the 
question of inspiration. Almost all Christians agree 
in the word, which use and tradition have consecrated 



37B ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

to express the reverence which they truly feel for the 
Old and New Testaments. But here the agreement 
of opinion ends : the meaning of inspiration has been 
variously explained, or more often passed over in 
silence from a fear of stirring the difficulties that 
would arise about it. It is one of those theological 
terms which may be regarded as " great peacemakers," 
but which are also sources of distrust and misunder- 
standing. For, while we are ready to shake hands 
with any one who uses the same language as ourselves, 
a doubt is apt to insinuate itself, whether he takes 
language in the same senses ; whether a particular 
term conveys all the associations to another which it 
does to ourselves ; whether it is not possible that one 
who disagrees about the word may not be more nearly 
agreed about the thing. The advice has, indeed, been 
given to the theologian, that he " should take care of 
words, and leave things to themselves." The author- 
ity, however, who gives the advice, is not good : it is 
placed by Goethe in the mouth of Mephistopheles. 
Pascal seriously charges the Jesuits with acting on a 
similar maxim, — excommunicating those who meant 
the same thing, and said another ; holding communion 
with those who said the same thing, and meant an- 
other. But this is not the way to heal the wounds of 
the Church of Christ : we cannot thus " skin and 
film " the weak places of theology. Errors about 
words, and the attribution to words themselves of an 
excessive importance, lie at the root of theological as 
of otheT confusions. In theology they are more dan- 
gerous than in other sciences, because they cannot so 
readily be brought to the test of facts. 

The word " inspiration " has received more numer- 
ous gradations and distinctions of meaning than per- 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 379 

haps any other in the whole of theology. There is 
an inspiration of superintendence and an inspiration 
of suggestion ; an inspiration which would have been 
consistent with the apostle or evangelist falling into 
error, and an inspiration which would have prevented 
him from erring ; verbal organic inspiration by which 
the inspired person is the passive utterer of a di- 
vine word, and an inspiration which acts through the 
character of the sacred writer. There is an inspira- 
tion which absolutely communicates the fact to be 
revealed or statement to be made, and an inspiration 
which does not supersede the ordinary knowledge of 
human events. There is an inspiration which de- 
mands infallibility in matters of doctrine, but allows 
for mistakes m fact. Lastly, there is a view of inspi- 
ration which recognizes only its supernatural and 
prophetic character ; and a view of inspiration which 
regards the apostles and evangelists as equally in- 
spired in their writmgs and in their lives, and in both 
receiving the guidance of the Spirit of truth in a 
manner not different in kind, but only in degree, from 
ordinary Christians. Many of these explanations lose 
sight of the original meaning and derivation of the 
word. Some of them are framed with the view of 
meeting difficulties : all, perhaps, err in attempting to 
define what, though real, is incapable of being defined 
in an exact manner. Nor for any of the higher or 
supernatural views of inspiration is there any founda- 
tion in the Gospels or Epistles. There is no appear- 
ance in their writings that the evangelists or apostles 
had any inward gift, or were subject to any power 
external to them different from that of preaching or 
teaching which they daily exercised; nor do they 
anywhere lead us to suppose that they were free from 



380 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

error or infirmity. St. Paul writes like a Christian 
teacher, exhibiting all the emotions and vicissitudes 
of human feeling ; speaking, indeed, with authority, 
but hesitating in difficult cases, and more than once 
correcting himself, — corrected, too, by the course of 
events in his expectation of the coming of Christ. 
The evangelist "who saw it, bare record, and his 
record is true ; and he knoweth that he saith true." 
(John xix. 35.) Another evangelist does not profess 
to be an original narrator, but only " to set forth in 
order a declaration of what eye-witnesses had de- 
livered," like many others whose writings have not 
been preserved to us. (Luke i. 1, 2.) And the result 
is in accordance with the simple profession and style 
in which they describe themselves : there is no ap- 
pearance, that is to say, of insincerity, or want of 
faith ; but neither is there perfect accuracy or agree- 
ment. One supposes the original dwelling-place of 
our Lord's parents to have been Bethlehem (Matt. ii. 
1, 22) ; another, Nazareth (Luke ii. 4). They trace 
his genealogy in difi'erent ways. One mentions the 
thieves blaspheming ; another has preserved to after- 
ages the record of the penitent thief. They appear 
to differ about the day and hour of the crucifixion. 
The narrative of the woman who anointed our Lord's 
feet with ointment is told in all four, each narrative 
having more or less considerable variations. These 
are a few instances of tlie differences which arose in 
the traditions of the earliest ages respecting the his- 
tory of our Lord. But he who wishes to investigate 
the character of the sacred writings should not be 
afraid to make a catalogue of them all with the view 
of estimating their cumulative weight. (For it is 
obvious, that the answer which would be admitted in 



ON THE INTEEPRETATION OF SCEIPTURE. 381 

the case of a single discrepancy will not be the true 
answer when there are many.) He should further 
consider, that the narratives in which these discrepan- 
cies occur are short, and partly identical, — a cycle 
of tradition beyond which the knowledge of the early 
Fathers never travels ; though, if all the things that 
Jesus said and did had been written down, " the world 
itself could not have contained the books that would 
have been written." (John xx. 30 ; xxi. 25.) For the 
proportion which these narratives bear to the whole 
subject, as well as their relation to one another, is an 
important element in the estimation of differences. 
In the same way, he who would understand the nature 
of prophecy in the Old Testament, should have the 
courage to examine how far its details were minutely 
fulfilled. The absence of such a fulfilment may fur- 
ther lead him to discover that he took the letter for 
the spirit in expecting it. 

The subject will clear of itself, if we bear in mind 
two considerations : First, that the nature of inspira- 
tion can only be known from the examination of Scrip- 
ture. There is no other source to which we can turn 
for information ; and we have no right to assume some 
imaginary doctrine of inspiration like the infallibility 
of the Roman Catholic Church. To the question, 
" What is inspiration ? " the first answer, therefore, is, 
" That idea of Scripture which we gather from the 
knowledge of it." It is no mere a priori notion, but 
one to which the book is itself a witness. It is a fact 
which we infer from the study of Scripture, — not of 
one portion only, but of the whole. Obviously, then, 
it embraces writings of very different kinds, — the 
Book of Esther, for example, or the Song of Solomon, 
as well as the Gospel of St. John. It is reconcilable 



382 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

with the mixed good and evil of the characters of the 
Old Testament, which nevertheless does not exclude 
them from the favor of God, with the attribution to 
the Divine Being of actions at variance with that 
higher revelation which he has given of himself in 
the gospel. It is not inconsistent with imperfect or 
opposite aspects of the truth, as in the Book of Job or 
Ecclesiastes ; with variations of fact in the Gospels 
or the books of Kings and Chronicles ; with inaccu- 
racies of language in the Epistles of St. Paul. For 
these are all found in Scripture : neither is there 
any reason why they should not be, except a general 
impression that Scripture ought to have been written 
in a way different from what it has. A principle of 
progressive revelation admits them all : and this is 
already contained in the words of our Saviour, " Mo- 
ses, because of the hardness of your hearts ; " or even 
in the Old Testament, " Henceforth there shall be no 
more this proverb in the house of Israel." For what 
is progressive is necessarily imperfect in its earlier 
stages, and even erring to those who come after, 
whether it be the maxims of a half-civilized world 
which are compared with those of a civilized one, or 
the law with the gospel. Scripture itself points the 
way to answer the moral objections to Scripture. 
Lesser difficulties remain, but only such as would be 
found commonly in writings of the same age or coun- 
try. There is no more reason why imperfect narra- 
tives should be excluded from Scripture than imper- 
fect grammar ; no more ground for expecting that the 
New Testament would be logical or Aristotelian in 
form, than that it would be written in Attic Greek. 

The other consideration is one which has been neg- 
lected by writers on this subject. It is this, — that 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 883 

any true doctrine of inspiration must conform to all 
well-ascertained facts of history or of science. The 
same fact cannot be true and untrue, any more than 
the same words can have two opposite meanings. The 
same fact cannot be true in religion when seen by the 
light of faith, and untrue in science when looked at 
through the medium of evidence or experiment. It 
is ridiculous to suppose that the sun goes round the 
earth in the same sense in which the earth goes round 
the sun ; or that the world appears to have existed, 
but has not existed during the vast epochs of wliich 
geology speaks to us. But, if so, there is no need of 
elaborate reconcilements of revelation and science : 
they reconcile themselves the moment any scientific 
truth is distinctly ascertained. As the idea of nature 
enlarges, the idea of revelation also enlarges : it was 
a temporary misunderstanding wliich severed them. 
And as the knowledge of nature which is possessed 
by the few, is communicated, in its leading features 
at least, to the many, they will receive with it a 
higher conception of the ways of God to man. It 
may hereafter appear as natural to the majority of 
mankind to see the providence of God in the order 
of the world, as it once was to appeal to interruptions 
of it. 

It is true that there are a class of scientific facts, 
with which popular opinions on theology often con- 
flict, which do not seem to conform in all respects to 
the severer conditions of inductive science : such es- 
pecially are the facts relating to the formation of the 
earth and the beginnings of the human race. But it 
is not worth while to fight on this debatable ground a 
losing battle, in the hope that a generation will pass 
away before we sound a last retreat. Almost all intel- 



384 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

ligent persons are agreed that the earth has existed 
for myriads of ages : the best informed are of opinion 
that the history of nations extends back some thousand 
years before the Mosaic chronology. Recent discov- 
eries in geology may, perhaps, open a further vista of 
existence for the human species ; while it is possible, 
and may one day be known, that mankind spread, not 
from one, but from many centres over the globe ; or, 
as others say, that the supply of links which are at 
present wanting in the chain of animal life may lead 
to new conclusions respecting the origin of man. 
Now, let it be granted that these facts, being with 
the past, cannot be shown in the same palpable and 
evident manner as the facts of chemistry or physiol- 
ogy ; and that the proof of some of them, especially 
of those last mentioned, is wanting : still it is a false 
policy to set up inspiration or revelation in opposition 
to them, — a principle which can have no influence 
on them, and should be rather kept out of their way. 
The sciences of geology and comparative philology are 
steadily gaining ground (many of the guesses of 
twenty years ago have become certainties, and the 
guesses of to-day may hereafter become so). Shall 
we peril religion on the possibility of their untruth ? 
On such a cast to stake the life of man, implies, not 
only a recklessness of facts, but a misunderstanding 
of the nature of the gospel. If it is fortunate for 
science, it is perhaps more fortunate for Christian 
truth, that the admission of Galileo's discovery has 
forever settled the principle of the relations between 
them. 

A similar train of thought may be extended to the 
results of historical inquiries. These results cannot 
be barred by the dates or narrative of Scripture ; 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 385 

neither should they be made to wind round into agree- 
ment with them. Again : the idea of inspiration must 
expand, and take them in. Their importance in a 
religious point of view is, not that they impugn or 
confirm the Jewish history, but that they show more 
clearly the purposes of God towards the whole human 
race. The recent chronological discoveries from Egyp- 
tian monuments do not tend to overthrow revelation, 
nor the Ninevite inscriptions to support it. The use 
of them on either side may, indeed, arouse a popular 
interest in them : it is apt to turn a scientific inquiry 
into a semi-religious controversy. And, to religion, 
either use is almost equally injurious, because seem- 
ing to rest truths important to human life on the 
mere accident of an archaeological discovery. Is it 
to be thought that Christianity gains anything from 
the deciphering of the names of some Assyrian and 
Babylonian kings, contemporaries chiefly with the 
later Jewish history ? As little as it ought to lose 
from the appearance of a contradictory narrative of 
the exodus in the chamber of an Egyptian temple 
of the year B. C. 1500. This latter supposition may 
not be very probable ; but it is worth while to ask 
ourselves the question, whether we can be right in 
maintaining any view of religion which can be affected 
by such a probability. 

It will be a further assistance in the consideration 
of this subject, to observe that the interpretation of 
Scripture has nothing to do with any opinion respect- 
ing its origin. The meaning of Scripture is one 
thing : the inspiration of Scripture is another. It 
is conceivable, that those who hold the most differ- 
ent views about the one may be able te agree about 
the other. Eigid upholders of the verbal inspiration 
IT Y 



886 ON THE INTEEPKETATION OF SCEIPTURE. 

of Scripture, and those who deny mspiration alto- 
gether, may nevertheless meet on the common ground 
of the meaning of words. If the term " inspiration" 
were to fall into disuse, no fact of nature or history or 
language, no event in the life of man, or dealings of 
God with him, would be in any degree altered. The 
word itself is but of yesterday, not found in the earlier 
confessions of the reformed faith : the difficulties that 
have arisen about it are only two or three centuries 
old. Therefore the question of inspiration, though in 
one sense important, is to the interpreter as though 
it were not important : he is in no way called upon 
to determine a matter with which he has nothing to 
do, and which was not determined by fathers of the 
Church ; and he had better go on his way, and leave 
the more precise defmition of the word to the pro- 
gress of knowledge and the results of the study of 
Scripture, instead of entangling himself with a theory 
about it. 

It is one evil of conditions or previous suppositions 
in the study of Scripture, that the assumption of them 
has led to an apologetic temper in the interpreters of 
Scripture. The tone of apology is always a tone of 
weakness, and does injury to a good cause. It is 
the reverse of " Ye shall know the truth, and the 
truth shall make you free." It is hampered with the 
necessity of making a defence, and also with previous 
defences of the same side : it accepts, with an ex- 
cess of reserve and caution, the truth itself, when 
it comes from an opposite quarter. Commentators 
are often more occupied with the proof of miracles, 
than with the declaration of life and immortality ; 
with the fulfilment of the details of prophecy, than 
with its life and power ; with the reconcilement of 



ON THE INTERPKETATION OF SCEIPTUEE. 387 

the discrepancies in the narrative of the infancy, 
pointed out by Schleiermacher, than with the impor- 
tance of the great event of the appearance of the 
Saviour. " To this end was I born, and for this cause 
came I into the world, that I shoidd bear witness unto 
the truth. ''^ The same tendency is observable also in 
reference to the Acts of the Apostles and the Epis- 
tles, which are not only brought into harmony with 
each other, but interpreted with a reference to the 
traditions of existing communions. The natural mean- 
ing of particular expressions — as, for example, " Why 
are they then baptized for the dead ? " (1 Cor. xv. 29 ;) 
or the words, " because of the angels " (1 Cor. xi. 10); 
or " This generation shall not pass away until all these 
things be fulfilled" (Matt. xxiv. 34) ; or, " Upon this 
rock will I build my Church " (Matt. xvi. 18) — is set 
aside in favor of others, which, however improbable, 
are more in accordance with preconceived opinions, 
or seem to be more worthy of the sacred writers. The 
language, and also the text, are treated on the same 
defensive and conservative principles. The received 
translations of Phil. ii. 6 (" Who, being in the form of 
God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God"), 
or of Rom. iii. 25 Q' Whom God hath set forth to be 
a propitiation through faith in his blood"), or Rom. 
XV. 6 (" God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ"), though erroneous, are not given up with- 
out a struggle ; the 1 Tim. iii. 16, and 1 John v. 7 
(the three witnesses), though the first (" God mani- 
fest in the flesh," SX for OX) is not found in the best 
manuscripts, and the second in no Greek manuscript 
worth speaking of, have not yet disappeared from the 
editions of the Greek Testament commonly in use in 
England, and still less from the English translation. 



388 ON THE INTERPKETATION OF SCRIPTUEE. 

An English commentator, who, with Lachman and 
Tischendorf, supported also by the authority of Eras- 
mus, ventures to alter the punctuation of the doxology 
in Rom. ix. 5 (" Who is over all God blessed forever ") 
hardly escapes the charge of heresy. That, in most 
of these cases, the words referred to have a direct 
bearing on important controversies, is a reason, not 
for retaining, but for correcting them. 

The temper of accommodation shows itself espe- 
cially in two ways : first, in the attempt to adapt the 
truths of Scripture to the doctrines of the creeds ; 
secondly, in the adaptation of the precepts and max- 
ims of Scripture to the language or practice of our 
own age. Now, the creeds are acknowledged to be a 
part of Christianity : they stand in a close relation to 
the words of Christ and his apostles. Nor can it 
be said that any heterodox formula makes a nearer 
approach to a simple and scriptural rule of faith. 
Neither is anything gained by contrasting them with 
Scripture, in which the germs of the expressions used 
in them are sufficiently apparent. Yet it does not 
follow that they should be pressed into the service of 
the interpreter. The growth of ideas in the interval 
which separated the first century from the fourth or 
sixth, makes it impossible to apply the language of 
the one to the explanation of the other. Between 
Scripture and the Nicene or Athanasian Creed, a 
world of the understanding comes in, — that world of 
abstractions and second notions : and mankind are no 
longer at the same point as when the whole of Chris- 
tianity was contained in the words, " Believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou mayest be saved ; " when 
the gospel centred in the attachment to a living or 
recently departed friend and Lord. The language of 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 389 

the New Testament is the first utterance and con- 
sciousness of the mind of Christ; or the immediate 
vision of the Word of Life (1 John i. 1) as it presented 
itself before the eyes of his first followers, or as the 
sense of his truth and power grew upon them (Rom. 
i. 3, 4) : the other is the result of three or four cen- 
turies of reflection and controversy. And although 
this last had a truth suited to its age, and its technical 
expressions have sunk deep into the heart of the 
human race, it is not the less unfitted to be the 
medium by the help of which Scripture is to be 
explained. If the occurrence of the phraseology of 
the Nicene age in a verse of the Epistles would detect 
the spuriousness of the verse in which it was found, 
how can the Nicene or Athanasian Creed be a suitable 
instrument for the interpretation of Scripture ? That 
advantage which the New Testament has over the 
teaching of the Church, as representing what may be 
termed the childhood of the gospel, would be lost if 
its language were required to conform to that of the 
Creeds. 

To attribute to St. Paul or the Twelve the abstract 
notion of Christian truth which afterwards sprang up 
in the Catholic Church, is the same sort of anachro- 
nism as to attribute to them a system of philosophy. It 
is the same error as to attribute to Homer the ideas of 
Thales or Heraclitus, or to Thales the more developed 
principles of Aristotle and Plato. Many persons, who 
have no difficulty in tracing the growth of institutions, 
yet seem to fail in recognizing the more subtle pro- 
gress of an idea. It is hard to imagine the absence 
of conceptions with which we are familiar ; to go back 
to the germ of what we know only in maturity ; to 
give up what has grown to us, and become a part 



390 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

of our minds. In the present case, however, the 
development is not difficult to prove. The statements 
of Scripture are unaccountable if we deny it : the 
silence of Scripture is equally imaccoun table. Ab- 
sorbed as St. Paul was in the person of Christ, with 
an intensity of faith and love, of which, in modern 
days and at this distance of time, we can scarcely form 
a conception ; high as he raised the dignity of his 
Lord above all things in heaven and earth, looking to 
him as the Creator of all things, and the head of quick 
and dead, — he does not speak of him as " equal to 
the Father," or " of one substance with the Father." 
Much of the language of the Epistles (passages, for 
example, such as Rom. i. 2 ; Phil. ii. 6) would lose 
their meaning if distributed in alternate clauses be- 
tween our Lord's humanity and divinity. Still greater 
difficulties would be introduced into the Gospels by 
the attempt to identify them with the Creeds. We 
should have to suppose that he was and was not 
tempted ; that, when he prayed to his Father, he 
prayed also to himself; that he knew and did not 
know " of that hour " of which he as well as the angels 
were ignorant. How could he have said, " My God, 
my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " or, " Father, 
if it be possible, let this cup pass from me " ? How 
could he have doubted whetlier " when the Son 
Cometh, he shall find faith upon the earth " ? These 
simple and touching words have to be taken out of 
their natural meaning and connection to be made the 
theme of apologetic discourses, if we insist on recon- 
ciling them with the distinctions of later ages. 

Neither, as has been already remarked, would the 
substitution of any other precise or definite rule of faith 
— as, for example, the Unitarian — be more favorable 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 391 

to the interpretation of Scripture. How could the 
Evangelist St. John have said, " The Word was God," 
or " God was the Word " (according to either mode of 
translating) ; or how would our Lord himself have 
said, "I and the Father are one," — if either had 
meant that Christ was a mere man, " a prophet, or as 
one of the prophets " ? No one, who takes words in 
their natural sense, can suppose that " in the begin- 
ning " (John i. 1) means " at the commencement of 
the ministry of Christ ; " or that " the Word was with 
God," only relates " to the withdrawal of Christ to 
commune with God ; " or that " the Word is said to be 
God," in the ironical sense of John x. 35. But, while 
venturing to turn one eye on these (perhaps obsolete) 
perversions of the meanings of words in old oppo- 
nents, we must not forget also to keep the other open 
to our own. The object of the preceding remark is, 
not to enter into controversy with them, or to balance 
the statements of one side with those of the other, but 
only to point out the error of introducing into the 
interpretation of Scripture the notions of a later age 
which is common alike to us and them. 

The other kind of accommodation which was alluded 
to above, arises out of the difference between the so- 
cial and ecclesiastical state of the world as it exists in 
actual fact, and the ideal which the gospel presents 
to us. An ideal is, by its very nature, far removed 
from actual life. It is enshrined, not in the material 
things of the external world, but in the heart and 
conscience. Mankind are dissatisfied at this separa- 
tion : they fancy that they can make the inward king- 
dom an outward one also. But this is not possible. 
The frame of civilization, that is to say, institutions 
and laws, the usages of business, the customs of so- 



892 ON THE INTERPKF.TATIOX OF SCRIPTURE. 

cioty. — thoso are tor tho most part nu\^hanioal. oapa- 
ble only in a oortaiu dogroo ol' a higher and spiritual 
lite. Christian niotivos havo novor existed in sueh 
strongth a.s to make it sale or possible to intrust them 
with the preservation of soeial order. Other inteivsts 
are theivlore provided, and other prinei[^les, olteu 
independent ot' the teaehing of the irospel. or even 
j\p[>;\rently at varianee with it. '* It' a man smite thee 
on the right eheek. turn to him the other also," is not 
sv regulation ot' poliee, but an ideal rule of eonduet, 
not to be exphiined away, but nvtvly if ever to be 
literally aeted upon in a eivilized eoui\try : or rather 
to be aeted upon always in spirit, yet not witliout 
a ivfcronee to the interests of the eonmuinlty. If a 
miv^sionary were to endanger the publie peaee, and 
come, like the a}>ostles, saying, '* I ought to obey (rod 
rather than n\an.*' it is obvious that the most Christian 
of magistrates eould not allow him (^say, in India or 
Kew Zealand") to shield himself \inder the authority of 
these words. For, in religion as in philosophy, theiv 
aiv two opposite ^x^les, — of truth and aetion, of d^Kv 
trine and }>raetiee. o( idea and faet. The image of 
God in Christ is tn er against the neeessities o( human 
nature and the state of man on earth. t>ur Lord 
himself reeognizes this distinelion when he says, " ()f 
whom do the kings of the earth gather tribute?*' and 
*' then are the ehildreu free." (^Matt. xvii. :2t>.^ And 
again : " Notwithstamiing. lest we should otVend them,'* 
A:e. Here aiv eontrasted what maybe termed the two 
poles of idea and faet. 

All n\en a^^peal to Seripture, and desire to draw the 
auti\ority of Scripture to their side: its voiee may be 
heard in the turmoil of politieal strite : a merely vei^ 
bal similaritv. the eeho of a wtn\i. has weight in the 



ON THE INTEIirRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 393 

doterininatioii of a controversy. Such appeals ai'C not 
to bo met always by counter-appeals : they rather lead 
to the consideration of deeper questions as to the 
manner in which Scripture is to bo apjilied. In what 
relation does it stand to actual life ? Is it a law, or 
only a spirit ? for nations, or for individuals ? to be 
enforced generally, or in details also ? Are its maxims 
to be modified by experience, or acted upon in defi- 
ance of experience ? Are the accidental circumstances 
of the first believers to Ijccome a rule for us ? Is 
everything, in short, done or said ])y our Saviour and 
his apostles, to be regarded as a precept or example 
which is to be followed on all occasions, and to last for 
all time ? That can hardly be, consistently with the 
changes of human things. It would be a rigid skele- 
ton of Christianity (not the image of Christ), to which 
society and politics, as well as the lives of individuals, 
would be conformed. It would be the oldness of the 
letter, on which the world w^ould be stretched ; not 
*' the law of the spirit of life " which St. Paul teaches. 
The attempt to force politics and law into the frame- 
work of religion is apt to drive us up into a corner, in 
which the great principles of truth and justice have 
no longer room to make themselves felt. It is better, 
as well as safer, to take the liljerty with which Christ 
has made us free. For our Lord himself has left 
behind him words which contain a principle large 
enough to admit all the forms of society or of life : 
" My kingdom is not of this world." (John xviii. 86.) 
It does not come into collision with politics or knowl- 
edge ; it has nothing to do with the Roman government 
or the Jewish priesthood, or with corresponding insti- 
tutions in the present day : it is a counsel of perfection, 
and has its dwelling-place in the heart of man. That 
IT* 



394 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

is the real solution of questions of Church and State : 
all else is relative to the history or circumstances of 
particular nations. That is the answer to a doubt 
which is also raised respecting the obligation of the 
letter of the gospel on individual Christians. But this 
inwardness of the words of Christ is what few are able 
to receive : it is easier to apply them superficially to 
things without, than to be a partaker of them from 
within. And false and miserable applications of them 
are often made, and the kingdom of God becomes the 
tool of the kingdoms of the world. 

The neglect of this necessary contrast between the 
ideal and the actual has had a twofold effect on the 
interpretation of Scripture. It has led to an unfair 
appropriation of some portions of Scripture, and an 
undue neglect of others. The letter is in many cases 
really or apparently in harmony with existing prac- 
tices or opinions or institutions. In other cases it is 
far removed from them : it often seems as if the world 
would come to an end before the words of Scripture 
could be realized. The twofold effect just now men- 
tioned corresponds to these two classes. Some texts 
of Scripture have been eagerly appealed to, and made 
(in one sense) too much of ; they have been taken by 
force into the service of received opinions and beliefs : 
texts of the other class have been either unnoticed, 
or explained away. Consider, for example, the ex- 
traordinary and unreasonable importance attached to 
single words, sometimes of doubtful meaning, in ref- 
erence to any of the following subjects: 1. Divorce; 
2. Marriage with a Wife's Sister ; 3. Inspiration ; 4. The 
Personality of the Holy Spirit ; 5. Infant-Baptism ; 
6. Episcopacy ; 7. Divine Right of Kings ; 8. Original 
Sin. There is, indeed, a kind of mystery in the way 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 395 

in which the chance words of a simple narrative, the 
occurrence of some accidental event, the use even of 
a figure of speech, or a mistranslation of a word in 
Latin or English, have affected the thoughts of future 
ages and distant countries. Nothing so slight that 
it has not been caught at ; nothing so plain that it 
may not be explained away. Wliat men have brought 
to the text they have also found there ; what has re- 
ceived no interpretation or witness, either in the 
customs of the Church or in " the thoughts of many 
hearts," is still " an unknown tongue " to them. It 
is with Scripture as with oratory : its effect partly 
depends on the preparation in the mind or in circum- 
stances for the reception of it. There is no use of 
Scripture, no quotation or even misquotation of a 
word, which is not a power in the world, when it em- 
bodies the spirit of a great movement, or is echoed 
by the voice of a large party. 

On the first of the subjects referred to above, it is 
argued from Scripture that adulterers should not be 
allowed to marry again ; and the point of the argu- 
ment turns on the question, whether the words (^€KTo<i 
Xoyov TTopveia^') " saving for the cause of fornication," 
which occur in the first clause of an important text 
on marriage, were designedly or accidentally omitted 
in the second. (Matt. v. 32.) " Whosoever shall put 
away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, 
causeth her to commit adultery ; and whoever shall 
marry her that is divorced committeth adultery." 
(Compare also Mark x. 11, 12.) 2. The Scripture 
argument in the second instance is almost invisible, 
being drawn from a passage the meaning of which is 
irrelevant (Lev. xviii. 18, '^Neither shalt thou take 
a wife to her sister to vex her, to uncover her naked- 



896 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

ness beside the other in her lifetime"), and trans- 
ferred from the polygamy which prevailed in Eastern 
countries three thousand years ago to the monogamy 
of the nineteenth century and the Christian Church, 
in spite of the custom and tradition of the Jews and 
the analogy of the brother's widow. 3. In the third 
case, the word (BeoTrvevaro^^ '' given by inspiration of 
God " is spoken of the Old Testament, and is assumed 
to apply to the New, including that Epistle in which 
the expression occurs. (2 Tim. iii. 16.) 4. In the 
fourth example, the words used are mysterious (John 
xiv. 26 ; xvi. 15), and seem to come out of the depths 
of a divine consciousness : they have sometimes, how- 
ever, received a more exact meaning than they would 
truly bear ; what is spoken in a figure is construed 
with the severity of a logical statement, while pas- 
sages of an opposite tenor are overlooked or set aside. 
5. In the fifth instance, the mere mention of a family 
of a jailer at Philippi who was baptized (" he and all 
his," Acts xvi. 33) has led to the inference, that in 
this family there were probably young children ; and 
hence that infant baptism is, first, permissive ; sec- 
ondly, obligatory. 6. In the sixth case, the chief stress 
of the argument from Scripture turns on the occur- 
rence of the word (lirla-Koiro^') "bishop" in the Epistles 
to Timothy and Titus, which is assisted by a supposed 
analogy between the position of the apostles and of 
their successors : altliough the term "bishop" is clearly 
used in the passages referred to, as well as in other 
parts of the New Testament, indistinguishably from 
" presbyter ; " and the magisterial authority of bishops 
in after ages is imlike rather than like the personal 
authority of the apostles in the beginning of the Gos- 
pel. The further development of Episcopacy into 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 397 

apostolical succession has often been rested on the 
promise, " Lo, I am with you alway, — even to the end 
of the world." 7. In the seventh case, the precepts 
of order which are addressed in the Epistle 190 the 
" fifth-monarchy men of those days " are transferred 
to a duty of obedience to hereditary princes ; the fact 
of the house of David, " the Lord's anointed," sitting 
on the throne of Israel, is converted into a principle 
for all times and countries ; and the higher lesson 
wliich our Saviour teaches, " Render unto Caesar the 
things which are Caesar's," — that is to say, " Render 
unto all their due, and to God above all," — is spoiled 
by being made into a precept of political subjection. 
8. Lastly, the justice of God, " who rewardeth every 
man according to his works," and the Christian scheme 
of redemption has been staked on two figurative ex- 
pressions of St. Paul, to which there is no parallel in 
any other part of Scripture (1 Cor. xv. 22, " For as 
in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made 
alive," and the corresponding passage in Rom. v. 12) ; 
notwithstanding the declaration of the Old Testament 
as also of the New, " Every soul shall bear its own 
iniquity," and "neither this man sinned nor his par- 
ents." It is not necessary for our purpose to engage 
further in the matters of dispute which have arisen 
by the way in attempting to illustrate the general 
argument. Yet, to avoid misconception, it may be 
remarked, that many of the principles, rules, or truths, 
mentioned, — as, for example, Infant-Baptism, or the 
Episcopal Form of Church Government, — have suf- 
ficient grounds : the weakness is the attempt to derive 
them from Scripture. 

With this minute and rigid enforcement of the 
words of Scripture in passages where the ideas ex- 



398 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

pressed in them either really or apparently agree 
with received opinions or institutions, there remains 
to be contrasted the neglect, or in some instances the 
misiifterpretation, of other words which are not equal- 
ly in harmony with the spirit of the age. In many of 
our Lord's discourses, he speaks of the " blessedness 
of poverty ; " of the hardness which they that have 
riches will experience "in attaining eternal life." — " It 
is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye ; " 
and " Son, thou in thy lifetime receivcdst thy good 
tilings ; " and again, " One thing though lackest: go, sell 
all that thou hast." Precepts like these do not appeal 
to our own experience of life : they are unlike any- 
thing that we sec around us at the present day, even 
among good men. To some among us they will recall 
the remarkable saying of Lessing, " that the Chris- 
tian religion had been tried for eighteen centuries: 
the religion of Cln-ist remained to be tried." To take 
them literally would be injurious to ourselves and to 
society (at least, so we think). Religious sects or 
orders who have seized this aspect of Christianity 
have come to no good, and have often ended in extrav- 
agance. It will not do to go into the world, saying, 
" Woe unto you, ye rich men ! " or, on entering a noble 
mansion, to repeat the denimciations of the prophet 
about " cedar and vermilion ; " or, on being shown the 
prospect of a magnificent estate, to cry out, " Woe 
unto them that lay field to field, that they may be 
placed alone in the midst of the earth ! " Times have 
altered, we say, since these denunciations were ut- 
tered : what appeared to the prophet or apostle a 
violation of the appointment of Providence has now 
become a part of it. It will not do to make a great 
supper, and mingle at the same board the two ends of 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 399 

society, as modern phraseology calls them ; fetching in 
" the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind," to fill the 
vacant places of noble guests. That would be eccen- 
tric in modern times, and even hurtful. Neither is it 
suitable for us to wash one another's feet, or to per- 
form any other menial office, because our Lord set us 
the example. The customs of society do not admit 
it ; no good would be done by it, and singularity is of 
itself an evil. Well, then, are the precepts of Christ 
not to be obeyed ? Perhaps in their fullest sense they 
cannot be obeyed. But, at any rate, they are not to 
be explained away : the standard of Christ is not to be 
lowered to ordinary Christian life, because ordinary 
Christian life cannot rise, even in good men, to the 
standard of Christ. And there may be " standing 
among us " some one in ten thousand, " whom we 
know not," in whom there is such a divine union of 
charity and prudence, that he is most blest in the 
entire fiulfilment of the precept, — " Go, sell all that 
thou hast," — which, to obey literally in other cases, 
would be evil, and not good. Many there have beeii, 
doubtless (not one or two only), who have given all 
that they had on earth to their family or friends, — 
the poor servant " castmg her two mites into the treas- 
ury ; " denying herself the ordinary comforts of life 
for the sake of an erring parent or brother : that is not 
probably an uncommon case, and as near an approach 
as in this life we make to heaven. And there may be 
some one or two rare natures in the world, in whom 
there is such a divine courtesy, such a gentleness 
and dignity of soul, that differences of rank seem to 
vanish before them, and they look upon the face of 
others, even of their own servants and dependants, 
only as they are in the sight of God and will be in 



400 ON THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

his kingdom. And there may be some tender and 
delicate woman among us, who feels that she has a 
divine vocation to fulfil the most repulsive offices 
towards the dying inmates of a hospital, or the soldier 
perishing in a foreign land. Whether such examples 
of self-sacrifice are good or evil, must depend, not 
altogether on social or economical principles, but on 
the spirit of those who offer them, and the power 
which they have in themselves of " making all things 
kin." And, even if the ideal itself were not carried 
out by us in practice, it has, nevertheless, what may 
be termed a truth of feeling. " Let them that have 
riches be as though they had them not." — "Let the 
rich man wear the load lightly : he will one day fold 
them up as a vesture." Let not the refinement of 
society make us forget, that it is not the refined only 
who are received into the kingdom of God ; nor the 
daintiness of life hide from us the bodily evils of 
which the rich man and Lazarus are alike heirs. 
Thoughts such as these have the power to reunite us 
to our fellow-creatures, from whom the accidents of 
birth, position, wealth, have separated us : they soften 
our hearts towards them, when divided not only by 
vice and ignorance, but, what is even a greater barrier, 
difference of manners and associations. For, if tliere 
be anything in our own fortune superior to that of 
others, instead of idolizing or cherishing it in the 
blood, the gospel would have us cast it from us : and, 
if there be anything mean or despised in those with 
whom we have to do, the gospel would have us regard 
such as friends and brethren ; yea, even as having the 
person of Christ. 

Another instance of apparent if not real neglect of 
the precepts of Scripture is furnislied by the com- 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 401 

mandment against swearing. No precept about di- 
vorce is SO plain, so universal, so exclusive, as this : 
*' Swear not at all." Yet we all know how the custom 
of Christian countries has modified this " counsel of 
perfection " which was uttered by the Saviour. This 
is the more remarkable, because in this case the pre- 
cept is not, as in the former, practically impossible of 
fulfilment, or even difficult. And yet, in this instance 
again, the body who have endeavored to follow more 
nearly the letter of our Lord's commandment seem to 
have gone against the common sense of the Christian 
world. Or to add one more example : Who, that 
hears of the Sabbatarianism, as it is called, of some 
Protestant countries, would imagine that the Author 
of our religion had cautioned his disciples, not against 
the violation of the sabbath, but only against its for- 
mal and Pharisaical observance ? or that the chiefest 
of the apostles had warned the Colossians to " let no 
man judge them in respect of the new moon or of the 
sabbath days " ? (ii. 16.) 

The neglect of another class of passages is even 
more surprising ; the precepts contained in them 
being quite practicable, and in harmony with the ex- 
isting state of the world. In this instance, it seems 
as if religious teachers had failed to gather those 
principles of which they stood most in need. " Think 
ye that those eighteen upon whom the Tower of Si- 
loam fell ? " is the characteristic lesson of the gospel 
on the occasion of any sudden visitation. Yet it is 
another reading of such calamities that is commonly 
insisted upon. The observation is seldom made re- 
specting the parable of the good Samaritan, that the 
true neighbor is also a person of a different religion. 
The words, " Forbid him not ; for there is no man, 

z 



402 ON THE INTEEPEETATION OF SCRIPTUEE. 

which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly 
speak evil of me," are often said to have no applica- 
tion to sectarian differences in the present day, when 
the Church is established and miracles have ceased. 
The conduct of our Lord to the woman taken in adul- 
tery, though not intended for our imitation always, 
yet affords a painful contrast to the excessive severity 
with which even a Christian society punishes the er- 
rors of women. The boldness with which St. Paul 
applies the principle of individual judgment, " Let 
every man be fully persuaded in his mind," as exhib- 
ited also in the words quoted above, " Let no man 
judge you in respect of the new moon or of the sab- 
bath days," is far greater than would be allowed in 
the present age. Lastly, that the tenet of the damna- 
tion of the Heathen should ever have prevailed in the 
Christian world, or that the damnation of Catholics 
should have been a received opinion among Protes- 
tants, implies a strange forge tfulness of such passages 
as Rom. ii. 1 - 16 : " Who rewardeth every man ac- 
cording to his work;" and "When the Gentiles, which 
know not the law, do by nature the things contained 
in the law," &c. What a difference between the 
simple statement which the apostle makes of the jus- 
tice of God, and the " uncovenanted mercies " or 
" invincible ignorance " of theologians, half reluctant 
to give up, yet afraid to maintain, the advantage of 
denying salvation to those who are extra palum Ec- 
dcsice ! 

The same habit of silence or misinterpretation ex- 
tends to words or statements of Scripture in which 
doctrines are thought to be interested. When main- 
taining the Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity, we do 
not readily recall the verse, " Of that hour knoweth no 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 403 

man ; no, not the angels of God ; neither the Son, but 
the Father." (Mark xiii. 32.) The temper or feeling 
which led St. Ambrose to doubt the genuineness of 
the words marked in Italics, leads Christians in our 
own day to pass them over. We are scarcely just to 
the Millenarians, or to those who maintain the contin- 
uance of miracles or spiritual gifts in the Christian 
Church, in not admitting the degree of support which 
is afforded to their views by many passages of Scrip- 
ture. The same remark applies to the Predestinarian 
controversy. The Calvinist is often hardly dealt with, 
in being deprived of his real standing-ground in the 
third and ninth chapters of the Epistle to the Romans ; 
and the Protestant, who thinks himself bound to prove 
from Scripture the very details of doctrine or disci- 
pline which are maintained in his Church, is often 
obliged to have recourse to harsh methods, and some- 
times to deny appearances which seem to favor some 
particular tenet of Roman Catholicism. (Matt. xvi. 
18, 19 ; xviii. 18. 1 Cor. iii. 15.) The Roman 
Catholic, on the other hand, scarcely observes that 
nearly all the distinctive articles of his creed are want- 
ing in the New Testament. The Calvinist, in fact, 
ignores almost the whole of the sacred volume for 
the sake of a few verses. The truth is, that, in seek- 
ing to prove our own opinions out of Scripture, we 
are constantly falling into the common fallacy of 
opening our eyes to one class of facts, and closing 
them to another. The favorite verses shine like 
stars, while the rest of the page is thrown into the 
shade. 

Nor, indeed, is it easy to say what is the meaning 
of " proving a doctrine from Scripture : " for, when 
we demand logical equivalents and similarity of cir- 



404 ON THE INTERPKETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

cumstances ; when we balance adverse statements, 
St. James and St. Paul, the New Testament with the 
Old, — it will be hard to demonstrate from Scripture 
any complex system either of doctrine or practice. 
The Bible is not a book of statutes, in which words 
have been chosen to cover the multitude of cases ; 
but in the greater portion of it, especially the Gospels 
and Epistles, '* like a man talking to his friend." Nay, 
more : it is a book written in the East, which is, in 
some degree, liable to be misunderstood, because it 
speaks the language and has the feeling of Eastern 
lands. Nor can we readily determine, in explaining 
the words of our Lord or of St. Paul, how much (even 
of some of the passages just quoted) is to be attribut- 
ed to Oriental modes of speech. Expressions which 
would be regarded as rhetorical exaggerations in the 
Western world are the natural vehicles of thought to 
an Eastern people. How great, then, must be the 
confusion where an attempt is made to draw out these 
Oriental modes with the severity of a philosophical 
or legal argument ! Is it not such a use of the words 
of Christ which he himself rebukes when he says, 
" It is the spirit that quickeneth : the flesh profiteth 
nothing" ? (John vi. 52, 63.) 

There is a further way in which the language of 
creeds and liturgies, as well as the ordinary theologi- 
cal use of terms, exercises a disturbing influence on 
the interpretation of Scripture. Words which occur 
in Scripture are singled out and incorporated in sys- 
tems, like stones taken out of an old building and put 
into a new one. They acquire a technical meaning 
more or less divergent from the original one. It is 
obvious, that their use in Scripture, and not their 
later and technical sense, must furnish the rule of 



ON THE INTEEPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 405 

interpretation. We should not have recourse to the 
meaning of a word in Polybius for the explanation of 
its use in Plato, or to the turn of a sentence in Lyco- 
phron to illustrate a construction of ^schylus. It is 
the same kind of anachronism which would interpret 
Scripture by the scholastic or theological use of the 
language of Scripture. It is remarkable that this use 
is indeed partial ; that is to say, it affects one class of 
words, and not another. Love and truth, for example, 
have never been theological terms : grace and faith, 
on the other hand, always retain an association with 
the Pelagian or Lutheran controversies. Justification 
and inspiration are derived from verbs which occur in 
Scripture, and the later substantive has clearly affect- 
ed the meaning of the original verb or verbal in the 
places where they occur. The remark might be fur- 
ther illustrated by the use of scriptural language 
respecting the sacraments, which has also had a reflex 
influence on its interpretation in many passages of 
Scripture, especially in the Gospel of St. John. (John 
iii. 5 ; \i. 56, &c.) Minds which are familiar with the 
mystical doctrine of the sacraments seem to see a 
reference to them in almost every place in the Old 
Testament as well as in the New, in which the 
words "water" or "bread and wine" may happen 
to occur. 

Other questions meet us on the threshold, of a dif- 
ferent kind, which also affect the interpretation of 
Scripture, and therefore demand an answer. Is it 
admitted that the Scripture has one, and only one, 
true meaning ? Or are we to follow the Fathers into 
mystical and allegorical explanations ? or, with the 
majority of modern interpreters, to confine ourselves 
to the double senses of prophecy, and the symbolism 



406 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

of the gospel in the law ? In either case we assume 
what can never be proved ; and an instrument is intro- 
duced, of such subtlety and pliability as to make the 
Scriptures mean anything, — Gallus in campanili, as 
the Waldenses described it ; " the weathercock on 
the churcli-tower," which is turned hither and thither 
by every wind of doctrine. That the present age 
has grown out of the mystical methods of the early 
Fathers is a part of its intellectual state. No one 
will now seek to find hidden meanings in the scar- 
let thread of Raliab, or the number of Abraham's fol- 
lowers ; or in the little circumstance mentioned after 
the resurrection of the Saviour, that St. Peter was 
the first to enter the sepulchre. To most educated 
persons in the nineteenth century, these applications 
of Scripture appear foolish. Yet it is rather the ex- 
cess of the method which provokes a smile than the 
method itself. For many remains of the mystical 
interpretation exist among ourselves : it is not the 
early Fathers only who have read the Bible crosswise, 
or deciphered it as a book of symbols. And the un- 
certainty is the same in any part of Scripture, if there 
is a departure from the plain and obvious meaning. 
If, for example, we alternate the verses in which our 
Lord speaks of the last things between the day of 
judgment and the destruction of Jerusalem ; or in the 
elder prophecies, which are the counterparts of these, 
make a corresponding division between the temporal 
and the spiritual Israel ; or, again, if we attribute to the 
details of the Mosaical ritual a reference to the New 
Testament ; or, once more, supposing the passage of 
the Red Sea to be regarded, not merely as a figure 
of baptism, but as a pre-ordained type, — the principle 
is conceded. There is no good reason why tlie scar- 



ON THE INTEllPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 407 

let thread of Rahab should not receive the explanation 
given to it by Clement. A little more or a little less 
of the method does not make the difference between 
certainty and uncertainty in the interpretation of 
Scripture. In whatever degree it is practised, it is 
equally incapable of being reduced to any rule : it 
is the interpreter's fancy ; and is likely to be not less 
but more dangerous and extravagant, when it adds 
the charm of authority from its use in past ages. 

Tlie question which has been suggested runs up 
into a more general one, — " the relation between the 
Old and New Testaments ; " for the Old Testament 
will receive a different meaning accordingly as it is 
explained from itself or from the New. In the first 
case, a careful and conscientious study of each one for 
itself is all that is required : in the second case, the 
types and ceremonies of the law, perhaps the very 
facts and persons of the history, will be assumed to 
be predestined or made after a pattern corresponding 
to the things that were to be in the latter days. And 
this question of itself stirs another question respecting 
tlie interpretation of the Old Testament in the New. 
Is such interpretation to be regarded as the meaning 
of the original text, or an accommodation of it to the 
thoughts of other times ? 

Our object is, not to attempt here the determination 
of these questions, but to point out that they must be 
determined before any real progress can be made or 
any agreement arrived at in the interpretation of 
Scripture. With one more example of another kind 
we may close tliis part of the subject. The origin of 
the three first Gospels is an inquiry which has not 
been much considered by English theologians since 
the days of Bishop Marsh. The difficulty of the 



408 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

question has been sometimes misunderstood ; the point 
being, how there can be so much agreement in words, 
and so much disagreement both in words and facts. 
The double phenomenon is the real perplexity ; how, 
in short, there can be all degrees of similarity and dis- 
similarity, the kind and degree of similarity being 
such as to make it necessary to suppose that large 
portions are copied from each other or from common 
documents ; the dissimilarities being of a kind which 
seem to render impossible any knowledge in the au- 
thors of one another's writings. The most probable 
solution of this difficulty is, that the tradition on which 
the three first Gospels are based was at first pre- 
served orally, and slowly put together and written in 
the three forms which it assumed at a very early 
period ; those forms being in some places, perhaps, 
modified by translation. It is not necessary to de- 
velop this hypothesis further. The point to be noticed 
is, that, whether this or some other theory be the true 
account (and some such account is demonstrably 
necessary), the assumption of such a theory, or rather 
the observation of the facts on which it rests, cannot 
but exercise an influence on interpretation. We can 
no longer speak of three independent witnesses of 
the Gospel narrative. Hence there follow some other 
consequences. (1.) There is no longer the same 
necessity as heretofore to reconcile inconsistent nar- 
ratives : the liarmony of the Gospels only means tlie 
parallelism of similar words. (2.) There is no longer 
any need to enforce everywhere the connection of 
successive verses ; for the same words will be found to 
occur in different connections in the different Gospels. 
(3.) Nor can the designs attributed toHheir authors 
be regarded as the free handling of the same subject 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 409 

on different plans ; the difference consisting chiefly in 
the occurrence or absence of local or verbal explana- 
tions, or the addition or omission of certain passages. 
Lastly, it is evident that no weight can be given to 
traditional statements of facts about the authorship, — 
as, for example, that respecting St. Mark being the 
interpreter of St. Peter, — because the Fathers who 
have handed down these statements were ignorant or 
unobservant of the great fact, which is proved by in- 
ternal evidence, that they are for the most part of 
common origin. 

Until these and the like questions are determined 
by interpreters, it is not possible that there should be 
agreement in the interpretation of Scripture. The 
Protestant and Catholic, the Unitarian and Trinitarian, 
will continue to fight their battle on the ground of 
the New Testament. The Preterists and Futurists, 
those who maintain that the roll of prophecies is com- 
pleted in past history or in the apostolical age ; those 
who look forward to a long series of events which are 
yet to come (et? a<^ai/e? top [xvOov aveveyicwv ovfc e.yei 
eXey^^oz/) , — may alike claim the authority of the Book 
of Daniel or the Revelation. Apparent coincidences 
will always be discovered by those who want to find 
them. Where there is no critical interpretation of 
Scripture, there will be a mystical or rhetorical one. 
If words have more than one meaning, they may have 
any meaning. Instead of being a rule of life or faith. 
Scripture becomes the expression of the ever-changing 
aspect of religious opinions. The unchangeable word 
of God, in the name of which we repose, is changed by 
each age and each generation in accordance with its 
passing fancy. The book in which we believe all re- 
ligious truth to be contained is the most uncertain of 
18 



410 ON THE INTEEPRETATION OF SCRIPTUEE. 

all books, because interpreted by arbitrary and uncer- 
tain methods. 

§3. 

It is probable that some of the preceding statements 
may be censured as a wanton exposure of the difficul- 
ties of Scripture. It will be said that such inquiries 
are for the few, while the printed page lies open to 
the many ; and that the obtrusion of them may offend 
some weaker brother, some half-educated or prejudiced 
soul, " for whom," nevertheless, in the touchhig lan- 
guage of St. Paul, " Christ died." A confusion of the 
heart and head may lead sensitive minds into a deser- 
tion of the principles of the Christian life, which are 
their own witness, because they are in doubt about 
facts which are really external to them. Great evil 
to character may sometimes ensue from such causes. 
" No man can serve two " opinions, without a sensible 
harm to his nature. The consciousness of this respon- 
sibility should be always present to writers on theology. 
But the responsibility is really twofold ; for there is a 
duty to speak the truth, as well as a duty to withhold 
it. The voice of a majority of the clergy throughout 
the world ; the half-sceptical, half-conservative in- 
stincts of many laymen ; perhaps, also, individual in- 
terest, — are in favor of the latter course : while a 
higher expediency pleads that " honesty is the best 
policy," and that truth alone " makes free." To this 
it may be replied, that truth is not truth to those 
who are unable to use it : no reasonable man would 
attempt to lay before the illiterate such a question 
as that concerning the origin of the Gospels. And 
yet it may be rejoined once more, the healthy tone 
of religion among the poor depends upon freedom 
of thought and inquiry among the educated. In 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 411 

this conflict of reasons, individual judgment must at 
last decide. That there has been no rude or improper 
unveiling of the difficulties of Scripture in the preced- 
ing pages is thought to be shown by the following con- 
siderations : — 

First, That the difficulties referred to are very well 
known : they force themselves on the attention, not 
only of the student, but of every intelligent reader 
of the New Testament, whether in Greek or English. 
The treatment of such difficulties in theological works 
is no measure of public opinion respecting them. 
Thoughtful persons, whose minds have turned towards 
theology, are continually discovering that the critical 
observations which they make themselves have been 
made also by others, apparently without concert. The 
truth is, that they have been led to them by the same 
causes ; and these, again, lie deep in the tendencies of 
education and literature in the present age. But no 
one is willing to break through the reticence which 
is observed on these subjects : hence a sort of smoul- 
dering scepticism. It is probable that the distrust is 
greatest at the time when the greatest elBforts are 
made to conceal it. Doubt comes in at the window, 
when Inquiry is denied at the door. The thoughts of 
able and highly-educated young men almost always 
stray towards the first principles of things : it is a 
great injury to them, and tends to raise in their 
minds a sort of incurable suspicion, to find that there 
is one book, of the fruit of the knowledge of which 
they are forbidden freely to taste ; that is, the Bible. 
The same spirit renders the Christian minister almost 
powerless in the hands of his opponents. He can 
give no true answer to the mechanic or artisan who 
has either discovered by his mother-wit, or who retails 



412 ON THE ENTEEPEETATION OF SCEIPTUEE. 

at second-hand, the objections of critics ; for he is un- 
able to look at things as they truly are. 

Secondly, As the time has come when it is no longer 
possible to ignore the results of criticism, it is of im- 
portance that Christianity should be seen to be in har- 
mony with them. That objections to some received 
views should be valid, and yet that they should be 
always held up as the objections of infidels, is a mis- 
chief to the Christian cause. It is a mischief, that 
critical observations, which any intelligent man can 
make for himself, should be ascribed to atheism or 
unbelief. It would be a strange and almost incredible 
thing, that the gospel, which at first made war only 
on the vices of mankind, should now be opposed to 
one of the highest and rarest of human virtues, — the 
love of truth ; and that, in the present day, the great 
object of Christianity should be, not to change the 
lives of men, but to prevent them from changing their 
opinions : that would be a singular inversion of the 
purposes for which Christ came into the world. 
The Christian religion is in a false position, when 
all the tendencies of knowledge are opposed to it : 
such a position cannot be long maintained, or can 
only end in the withdrawal of the educated classes 
from the influences of religion. It is a grave con- 
sideration, whether we ourselves may not be in an 
earlier stage of the same religious dissolution which 
seems to have gone further in Italy and France. 
The reason for thinking so is not to be sought in 
the external circumstances of our own or any other 
religious communion, but in the progress of ideas 
with which Christian teachers seem to be ill at ease. 
Time was when the gospel was before the age ; 
when it breathed a new life into a decaying world ; 



ON THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTUEE. 413 

when the difficulties of Christianity were difficulties 
of the heart only, and the highest minds found in 
its truths, not only the rule of their lives, but a well- 
spring of intellectual delight. Is it to be held a 
thing impossible, that the Christian religion, instead of 
shrinking into itself, may again embrace the thoughts 
of men upon the earth ? Or is it true, that, since the 
Reformation, " all intellect has gone the other way ; " 
and that, in Protestant countries, reconciliation is as 
hopeless as Protestants commonly believe to be the 
case in Catholic ? 

Those who hold the possibility of such a reconcile- 
ment or restoration of belief are anxious to disengage 
Christianity from all suspicion of disguise or unfairness. 
They wish to preserve the historical use of Scripture, 
as the continuous witness, in all ages, of the higher 
things in the heart of man ; as the inspired source 
of truth, and the way to the better life. They are 
willing to take away some of the external supports, 
because they are not needed, and do harm ; also be- 
cause they interfere with the meaning. They have 
a faith, not that, after a period of transition, all things 
will remain just as they were before, but that they will 
all come round again to the use of man and to the 
glory of God. When interpreted like any other book, 
by the same rules of evidence and the same canons 
of criticism, the Bible will still remain unlike any 
other book: its beauty vrill be freshly seen, as of a 
picture which is restored after many ages to its 
original state ; it will create a new interest, and make 
for itself a new kind of authority, by the life which is 
in it. It will be a spirit, and not a letter, as it was in 
the beginning ; having an influence like that of the 
spoken word, or the book newly found. The purer 



414 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

the light in the human heart, the more it will have 
an expression of itself in the mind of Christ : the 
greater the knowledge of the development of man, 
the truer will be the insight gained into the " in- 
creasing purpose " of revelation. In which, also, the 
individual soul has a practical part ; finding a sym- 
pathy with its own imperfect feelings, in the broken 
utterance of the psalmist or the prophet, as well as 
in the fulness of Christ. The harmony between 
Scripture and the life of man, in all its stages, may be 
far greater than appears at present. No one can form 
any notion from what we see around us, of the power 
which Christianity might have if it were at one with 
the conscience of man, and not at variance with his 
intellectual convictions. There, a world weary of the 
heat and dust of controversy, — of speculations about 
God and man ; weary, too, of the rapidity of its own 
motion, — would return home, and find rest. 

But for the faith that the gospel might win again 
the minds of intellectual men, it would be better to 
leave religion to itself, instead of attempting to draw 
them together. Other walks in literature have peace 
and pleasure and profit; the path of the critical 
interpreter of Scripture is almost always a thorny one 
in England. It is not worth while for any one to 
enter upon it who is not supported by a sense that 
he has a Christian and moral object ; for, although an' 
interpreter of Scripture in modern times will hardly 
say with the emphasis of the apostle, " Woe is me if I 
speak not the truth, without regard to consequences ! " 
yet he, too, may feel it a matter of duty not to conceal 
the things which he knows. He does not hide the 
discrepancies of Scripture, because the acknowledg- 
ment of them is the first step towards agreement 



ON THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTUEE. 415 

among interpreters. He would restore the original 
meaning, because " seven other " meanings take the 
place of it : the book is made the sport of opinion, 
and the instrument of perversion of life. He would 
take the excuses of the head out of the way of the 
heart. There is hope, too, that, by drawing Christians 
together on the ground of Scripture, he may also 
draw them nearer to one another. He is not afraid 
that inquiries, which have for their object the truth, 
can ever be displeasing to the God of truth ; or that 
the word of God is in any such sense a word as to 
be hurt by investigations into its human origin and 
conception. 

It may be thought another ungracious aspect of 
the preceding remarks, that they cast a slight upon 
the interpreters of Scripture in former ages. The 
early Fp^thers, the Roman Catholic mystical writers, 
the Swiss and German Reformers, the Nonconformist 
divines, have qualities for which we look in vain among 
ourselves : they throw an intensity of light upon the 
page of Scripture, which we nowhere find in modern 
commentaries ; but it is not the light of interpretation. 
They have a faith which seems, indeed, to have grown 
dim now-a-days ; but that faith is not drawn from the 
study of Scripture : it is the element in which their 
own mind moves, which overflows on the meaning of 
the text. The words of Scripture suggest to them 
their own thoughts or feelings. They are preachers, 
or, in the New Testament sense of the word, prophets, 
rather than interpreters. There is nothing in such a 
view derogatory to the saints and doctors of former 
ages. That Aquinas or Bernard did not shake them- 
selves free from the mystical method of the Patristic 
times, or the scholastic one which was more peculiarly 



416 OK THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

their own ; that Luther and Calvin read the Scriptures 
in connection with the ideas which were kindling in 
the mind of their age, and the events which were 
passing before their eyes, — these and similar remarks 
are not to be construed as depreciatory of the genius 
or learning of famous men of old : they relate only to 
their interpretation of Scripture, in which it is no 
slight upon them to maintain that they were not before 
their day. 

What remains may be comprised in a few precepts, 
or rather is the expansion of a single one. Interpret 
the Scripture like any other hook. There are many 
respects in which Scripture is unlike any other book : 
these will appear in the results of such an interpreta- 
tion. The first step is to know the meaning ; and this 
can only be done in the same careful and impartial 
way that we ascertain the meaning of Sophocles or 
of Plato. The subordinate principles which flow out 
of this general one will also be gathered from the 
observation of Scripture. No other science of Her- 
meneutics is possible but an inductive one ; that is to 
say, one based on the language and thoughts and 
narrations of the sacred writers. And it would be 
well to carry the theory of interpretation no further 
than in the case of other works. Excessive system 
tends to create an impression that the meaning of 
Scripture is out of our reach, or is to be attained in 
some other way than by the exercise of manly sense 
and industry. Who would write a bulky treatise 
about the method to be pursued in interpreting Plato 
or Sophocles ? Let us not set out on our journey so 
heavily equipped that there is little chance of our 
arriving at the end of it. The method creates itself 
as we go on, beginning only with a few reflections 



ON THE INTEEPEETATION OF SCRIPTUKE. 417 

directed against plain errors. Such reflections are 
the rules of common sense, which we acknowledge 
with respect to other works written in dead lan- 
guages.- Without pretending to novelty, they may 
help us to " return to nature " in the study of the 
sacred writings. 

First, It may be laid down that Scripture has one 
meaning, — the meaning which it had to the mind of 
the prophet or evangelist who first uttered or wrote, to 
the hearers or readers who first received it. Another 
view may be easier or more familiar to us, seeming 
to receive a light and interest from the circumstances 
of our own age. But such accommodation of the 
text must be laid aside by the interpreter, whose 
business is to place himself as nearly as possible in 
the position of the sacred writer. That is no easy 
task, — to call up the inner and outer life of the con- 
temporaries of our Saviour ; to follow the abrupt and 
involved utterance of St. Paul or one of the old 
prophets ; to trace the meaning of words when lan- 
guage first became Christian. He will often have to 
choose the more difficult interpretation (Gal. ii. 20 ; 
Bom. iii. 15, &c.), and to refuse one more in agree- 
ment with received opinions, because the latter is less 
true to the style and time of the author. He may 
incur the charge of singularity, or confusion of ideas, 
or ignorance of Greek, from a misunderstanding of the 
peculiarity of the subject in the person who makes the 
charge. For if it be said that the translation of some 
Greek words is contrary to the usages of grammar 
(Gal. iv. 13), that is not in every instance to be de- 
nied : the point is, whether the usages of grammar are 
always observed. Or if it be objected to some inter- 
pretation of Scripture that it is difficult and perplexing, 

18* AA 



418 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

the answer is, " Tliat may very well be : it is tlie fact," 
arising out of diflferences in the modes of thought of 
other times, or irregularities in the use of language, 
which no art of the interpreter can evade. One con- 
sideration should be borne in mind, that the Bible is 
the only book in the world, written in ditferent styles 
and at many different times, which is in the hands of 
persons of all degrees of knowledge and education. 
The benefit of this outweighs the evil : yet the evil 
should be admitted ; namely, that it leads to a hasty 
and partial interpretation of Scripture, which often 
obscures the true one. A sort of conflict arises be- 
tween scientific criticism and popular opinion. The 
indiscriminate use of Scripture has a further tendency 
to maintain erroneous readings or translations : some 
which are allowed to be such by scholai-s have been 
stereotyped in the mind of the English reader ; and it 
becomes almost a political question, how far we can 
venture to- disturb them. 

There are ditficulties of another kind in many parts 
of Scripture, the depth and inwardness of which 
require a measure of the same qualities in the inter- 
preter himself. There are notes struck in places, 
which, like some discoveries of science, have sounded 
before their time, and, only after many days, have been 
caught up, and found a response on the earth. There 
are germs of truth, which, after thousands of years, 
have never yet taken root in the world. There are 
lessons in the prophets, which, however simple, man- 
kind have not yet learned even in theory, and which 
the complexity of society rather tends to hide ; aspects 
of human life, in Job and Ecclesiastes, which have a 
truth of desolation about them which we faintly real- 
ize m ordinary circumstances. It is, perhaps, the 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 419 

greatest difficulty of all to enter into the meaning of 
the words of Christ, — so gentle, so human, so divine ; 
neither adding to them, nor marring their simplicity. 
The attempt to illustrate or draw them out in detail, 
even to guard against their abuse, is apt to disturb 
the balance of truth. The interpreter needs nothing 
short of " fashioning " in himself the image of the 
mind of Christ. He has to be born again into a new 
spiritual or intellectual world, from which the thoughts 
of this world are shut out. It is one of the highest 
tasks on which the labor of a life can be spent, to 
bring the words of Christ a little nearer the heart of 
man. 

But, while acknowledging this inexhaustible or in- 
finite character of the sacred writings, it does not, 
therefore, follow that we are willing to admit of hid- 
den or mysterious meanings in them (in the same way, 
we recognize the wonders and complexity of the laws 
of nature to be far beyond what eye has seen or knowl- 
edge reached ; yet it is not therefore to be supposed 
that we acknowledge the existence of some other 
laws, different in kind from those we know, which are 
incapable of philosophical analysis) . In like mamier, 
we have no reason to attribute to the prophet or evan- 
gelist any second or hidden sense different from that 
which appears on the surface. All that the prophet 
meant may not have been consciously present to his 
mind : there were depths which to himself also were 
but half revealed. He beheld the fortunes of Israel 
passing into the heavens : the temporal kingdom was 
fading into an eternal one. It is not to be supposed 
that what he saw at a distance only was clearly defined 
to him, or that the universal truth which was appear- 
ing and reappearing in the history of the surrounding 



420 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

world took a purely spiritual or abstract form in his 
miiid. There is a sense in which we may still say, 
with Lord Bacon, that the words of prophecy are to 
be interpreted as the words of One " with whom a 
thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thou- 
sand years." But that is no reason for turning days 
into years ; or for interpreting the things " that must 
shortly come to pass," in the Book of Revelation, as 
the events of modern history ; or for separating the 
day of judgment from the destruction of Jerusalem, 
in the Gospels. The double meaning which is given 
to our Saviour's discourse respecting the last things 
is not that '' form of eternity" of which Lord Bacon 
speaks : it resembles rather the doubling of an object 
when seen through glasses placed at different angles. 
It is true, also, that there are types in Scripture which 
were regarded as such by the Jews themselves ; as, 
for example, the scapegoat, or the paschal lamb. But 
that is no proof of all outward ceremonies being types, 
when Scripture is silent : (if we assume the New Tes- 
tament as a tradition running parallel with the Old, 
may not the Roman Catholic assume with equal reason 
a tradition running parallel with the New ?) Pro- 
phetic symbols, again, have often the same meaning in 
different places (e. g-. the four beasts, or living crea- 
tures ; the colors, white or red) : the reason is, that 
this meaning is derived from some natural association 
(as of fruitfulness, purity, or the like) ; or, again, they 
are borrowed in some of the later prophecies from ear- 
lier ones. We are not, therefore, justified in suppos- 
ing any hidden connection in the prophecies where 
they occur. Neither is there any ground for assuming 
design of any other kind in Scripture any more than 
in Plato or Homer. Wherever there is beauty and 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 421 

order, there is design ; but there is no proof of any 
artificial design, such as is often traced by the Fathers, 
in the relation of the several parts of a book, or of 
the several books to each other. That is one of those 
mischievous notions which enables us, under the dis- 
guise of reverence, to make Scripture mean what we 
please. Nothing that can be said of the greatness or 
sublimity or truth or depth or tenderness of many 
passages is too much. But that greatness is of a 
simple kind : it is not increased by double senses, or 
systems of types, or elaborate structure, or design. 
If every sentence was a mystery, every word a riddle, 
every letter a symbol, that would not make the Scrip- 
tures more worthy of a divine author : it is a Heathen- 
ish or Rabbinical fancy which reads them in this way. 
Such complexity would not place them above, but 
below, human compositions in general ; for it would 
deprive them of the ordinary intelligibleness of human 
language. It is not for a Christian theologian to say 
that words were given to mankind to conceal their 
thoughts ; neither was revelation given them to con- 
ceal the divine. 

The second rule is an application of the general 
principle : " Interpret Scripture from itself," as in 
other respects, like any other book written in an age 
and country of which little or no other literature sur- 
vives, and about which we know almost nothing, ex- 
cept what is derived from its pages. Not that all the 
parts of Scripture are to be regarded as an indistin- 
guishable mass. The Old Testament is not to be 
identified with the New, nor the Law with the Proph- 
ets, nor the Gospels with the Epistles, nor the 
Epistles of St. Paul to be violently harmonized with 
the Epistle of St. James. Each writer, each succes- 



422 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

sive age, has characteristics of its own, as strongly 
marked, or more strongly, than those which are found 
in the authors or periods of classical literature. These 
diflferences are not to be lost in the idea of a Spirit 
from whom they proceed, or by which they were 
overruled ; and, therefore, illustration of one part of 
Scripture by another sliould be confined to writings 
of the same age and the same authors, except where 
the writings of ditferent ages or persons offer obvious 
similarities. It may be said further, that illustration 
should be chiefly derived, not only from the same au- 
thor, but from the same writing, or from one of the 
same period of his life. For example, the comparison 
of St. John and the " synoptic " Gospels, or of the 
Gospel of St. John with the Revelation of St. John, 
will tend rather to confuse than to elucidate the mean- 
ing of either ; while, on the other hand, the compari- 
son of the prophets witli one another and with the 
Psalms offers many valuable helps and lights to the 
interpreter. Again : the connection between the Epis- 
tles written by the Apostle St. Paul about the same 
time (^.5*. Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, — 
Colossians, Philippians, Ephesians, — compared with 
Romans, Colossians, — Ephesians, Galatians, <fcc.) is 
far closer than of Epistles which are separated by an 
interval of only a few years. 

But supposing all this to be understood, and that 
by the interpretation of Scripture from itself is meant 
a real interpretation of like by like : it may be asked. 
What is that we gain from a minute comparison of 
a particular author or writing ? The indiscriminate 
use of parallel passages, taken from one end of Scrip- 
ture and applied to the other (except so far as earlier 
compositions may have afforded the material or the 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 423 

form of later ones), is useless and uncritical. The 
uneducated or imperfectly educated person who looks 
out the marginal references of the English Bible, 
imagining himself in this way to gain a clearer insight 
into the divine meaning, is really following the relig- 
ious associations of his own mind. Even the critical 
use of parallel passages is not without danger. For 
are we to conclude that an author meant in one place 
what he says in another ? Shall we venture to mend 
a corrupt phrase on the model of some other phrase, 
which memory, prevailing over judgment, calls up, 
and thrusts into the text ? It is this fallacy which has 
filled the pages of classical writers with useless and 
unfounded emendations. 

The meaning of the canon, '' Non nisi ex Scriptura 
Scripturam potes interpretari," is only this, " Tliat we 
cannot understand Scripture without becoming familiar 
with it." Scripture is a world by itself, from which 
we must exclude foreign influences, whether theolog- 
ical or classical. To get inside that world is an effort 
of thought and imagination, requiring the sense of a 
poet as well as a critic, — demanding, much more than 
learning, a degree of original power, and intensity of 
mind. Any one, who, instead of burying himself in 
the pages of the commentators, would learn the sacred 
writings by heart, and paraphrase them in English, 
will probably make a nearer approach to their true 
meaning than he would gather from any commentary. 
The intelligent mind will ask its own questions, and 
find, for the most part, its own answers. The true 
use of interpretation is to get rid of interpretation, 
and leave us alone in company with the author. When 
the meaning of Greek words is once known, the 
young student has almost all the real materials which 



424 ON THE INTEEPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

are possessed by the greatest biblical scholar, in the 
book itself. For almost our whole knowledge of the 
history of the Jews is derived from the Old Testa- 
ment and the Apocryphal books, and almost our 
whole knowledge of the life of Christ and of the apos- 
tolical age is derived from the New : whatever is 
added to them is either conjecture, or very slight 
topographical or chronological illustration. For this 
reason, the rule given above, which is applicable to 
all books, is applicable to the New Testament more 
than any other. 

Yet, in this consideration of the separate books of 
Scripture, it is not to be forgotten that they have also 
a sort of continuity. We make a separate study of 
the subject, the mode of thought, in some degree also 
of the language, of each book ; and at length the 
idea arises in our minds of a common literature, a per- 
vading life, an overruling law. It may be compared 
to the effect of some natural scene in which we sud- 
denly perceive a harmony or picture, or to the imper- 
fect appearance of design which suggests itself in 
looking at the surface of the globe. That is to say, 
there is nothing miraculous or artificial in the arrange- 
ment of the books of Scripture : it is the result, not 
the design, which appears in them, when bound in the 
same volume. Or, if we like -so to say, there is design, 
but a natural design which is revealed to after-ages. 
Such continuity or design is best expressed under 
some notion of progress or growth, not regular, how- 
ever, but with broken and imperfect stages, which tlie 
want of knowledge prevents our minutely defining. 
The great truth of the Unity of God was there from 
the first : slowly as the morning broke in the heavens, 
hke some central light, it filled, and afterwards dis- 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 425 

persed, the mists of human passion in which it was 
itself enveloped. A change passes over the Jewish 
religion from fear to love, from power to wisdom, 
from the justice of God to the mercy of God, from 
the nation to the individual, from this world to an- 
other ; from the visitation of the sins of the fathers 
upon the children, to " every soul shall bear its own 
iniquity ; " from the fire, the earthquake, and the storm, 
to the still small voice. There never was a time, after 
the deliverance from Egypt, in which the Jewish people 
did not bear a kind of witness against the cruelty and 
licentiousness of the surrounding tribes. In the de- 
cline of the monarchy, as the kingdom itself was sink- 
ing under foreign conquerors, whether springing from 
contact with the outer world or from some reaction 
within, the undergrowth of morality gathers strength ; 
first, in the anticipation of prophecy ; secondly, like a 
green plant in the hollow rind of Pharisaism, — and 
individuals pray and commune with God each one for 
himself. At length, the tree of life blossoms : the 
faith in immortahty which had hitherto slumbered in 
the heart of man, intimated only in doubtful words 
(2 Sam. xii. 23 ; Ps. xvii. 15), or beaming for an 
instant in dark places (Job xix. 25), has become the 
prevailing belief. 

There is an interval in the Jewish annals which we 
often exclude from our thoughts, because it has no 
record in the canonical writings, — extending over 
about four hundred years, from the last of the proph- 
ets of the Old Testament to the forerunner of Christ 
in the New. This interval, about which we know so 
little, which is regarded by many as a portion of sec- 
ular rather than of sacred history, was nevertheless as 
fruitful ill religious changes as any similar period 



4i!G ox THE DrrERPKETATIOX OF SCKIFTUKE. 

>vhioli preceded. The establishment of the Jewish 
sects, and the wars of the Maccabees, probably exer- 
cised as givat an intluence on Judaism as the captivity 
itself. A third intluence was that of the Alexandrian 
literature, which was attracting the Jewish intellect, 
at the same time that the Galilean zealot was tearing 
the nation in pieces with the doctrine that it was law- 
ful to call ** no man master but God." In contrast 
with that wild fiinaticism as well as with the pi\nid 
Pharisee, came One most unlike all that had been 
before, as the kings or rulei's of mankmd. In an ag^o 
which was the victim of its own passions, the creature 
of its own circumstances, the slave of its own degen- 
erate ivligion, our Saviour taught a lesson absolutely 
free from all the intluences of a surrounding world. 
lie made the last perfect revelation of God to man, — 
a revelation not indeed immediately applicable to tho 
state of society or the world, but, in its truth and 
purity, m exhaustible by the after generations of men ; 
and, of the first application of the truth which ho 
taught as a counsel of perfection to the actual cir- 
cumstances of mankind, we have the example in tho 
Epistles. 

Such a general conception of growth or develojv 
ment in Scripture, beguining with the truth of tho 
Unity of God in the earliest books and ending ^\*ith 
the perfection of Christ, naturally spring's up in our 
minds in the perusal of the sacred writings. It is a 
notion of value to the interpreter ; for it enables him 
at the same time to grasp the whole, and distinguish 
the parts. It saves him fi\^m the necessity of main- 
touimg that the Old Testament is one and the samo 
everywhere : that the lx>oks of Moses contain truths 
or precepts, such as the duty of prayer, or the faith in 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 427 

immortality, or the spiritual interpretation of sacrifice, 
which no one has ever seen there. It leaves him 
room enough to admit all the facts of the case. No 
longer is he required to defend or to explain away 
David's imprecations against his enemies, or his in- 
junctions to Solomon, any more than his sin in the 
matter of Uriah. Nor is he hampered with a theory 
of accommodation. Still the sense of " the increasing 
purpose which through the ages ran " is present to 
him, nowhere else continuously discernible or ending 
in a divine perfection. Nowhere else is there found 
the same interpenetration of the political and religious 
element : a whole nation, " though never good for 
much at any time," possessed with the conviction that 
it was living in the face of God ; in whom the Sun 
of righteousness shone upon the corruption of an 
Eastern nature, — the " fewest of all people," yet bear- 
ing the greatest part in the education of the world. 
Nowhere else among the teachers and benefactors of 
mankind is there any form like His, in whom the de- 
sire of the nation is fulfilled ; and " not of that nation 
only," but of all mankind, whom he restores to his 
Father and their Father, to his God and their God. 

Such a growth or development may be regarded as 
a kind of progress from childhood to manhood. In 
the child there is an anticipation of truth ; his reason 
is latent in the form of feeling ; many words are used 
by him which he imperfectly understands ; he is led 
by temporal promises, believing that to be good is to 
be happy always ; he is pleased by marvels, and has 
vague terrors ; he is confined to a spot of earth, and 
lives in a sort of prison of sense, yet is bursting also 
with a fulness of childish life ; he imagines God to be 
like a human father, only greater and more awful ; he 



428 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

is easily impressed with solemn thoughts, but soon 
" rises up to play " with other children. It is observ- 
able, that his ideas of right and wrong are very sim- 
ple, hardly extending to another life : they consist 
chiefly in obedience to his parents, whose word is his 
law. As he grows older, he mixes more and more 
with others ; first, with one or two who have a great 
influence in the direction of his mind. At length, the 
world opens upon him ; another work of education 
begins ; and he learns to discern more truly the 
meaning of things and his relation to men in general. 
(You may complete the image by supposing that 
there was a time in his early days when he was a 
helpless outcast " in the land of Egypt and the house 
of bondage.") And, as he arrives at manhood, he 
reflects on his former years, — the progress of his 
education, the hardships of his infancy, the home of 
his youth (the thought of which is ineffaceable in 
after-life) ; and he now understands that all this was 
but a preparation for another state of being, in which 
he is to play a part for himself. And, once more, in 
age you may imagine him like the patriarch looking 
back on the entire past, which he reads anew, per- 
ceiving that the events of life had a purpose or result 
which was not seen at the time : they seem to him 
bound " each to each by natural piety." 

" Wliich things are an allegory," the particulars of 
which any one may interpret for himself; for the 
child born after the flesh is the symbol of the child 
born after the Spirit. " The law was a schoolmaster 
to bring men to Christ," and now " we are under a 
schoolmaster" no longer. The anticipation of truth 
which came from 'without to the childhood or youth 
of the human race is witnessed to within : the reve- 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCEIPTUEE. 429 

lation of God is not lost, but renewed in the heart 
and understanding of the man. Experience has 
taught us the application of the lesson in a wider 
sphere, and many influences have combined to form 
the " after-life " of the world. "When, at the close 
(shall we say ?) of a great period in the history of 
man, we cast our eyes back on the course of events, 
from the " angel of his presence in the wilderness " 
to the multitude of peoples, nations, languages, who 
are being drawn together by His providence ; from 
the simpHcity of the pastoral state in the dawn of the 
world's day, to all the elements of civilization and 
knowledge which are beginning to meet and mingle 
in a common life, — we also understand that we are no 
longer in our early home, to which, nevertheless, we 
fondly look ; and that the end is yet unseen, and the 
purposes of God towards the human race only half 
revealed. And to turn once more to the interpreter 
of Scripture : he, too, feels that the continuous growth 
of revelation which he traces in the Old and New 
Testament is a part of a larger whole extending over 
the earth, and reaching to another world. 

§4. 
Scripture has an inner life or soul : it has also an 
outward body or form. That form is language, which 
imperfectly expresses our common notions, — much 
more those higher truths which religion teaches. At 
the time when our Saviour came into the world, the 
Greek language was itself in a state of degeneracy 
and decay. It had lost its poetic force, and was 
ceasing to have the sway over the mind which classi- 
cal Greek once held. That is a more important revo- 
lution in the mental history of mankind than we easily 
conceive in modern times, when all languages sit 



430 ON THE INTERPEETATION OF SCEIPTURE. 

loosely on thought, and the peculiarities or idiosyn- 
crasies of one are corrected by our knowledge of 
another. It may be numbered among the causes 
which favored the growth of Christianity. That de- 
generacy was a preparation for the gospel, — the 
decaying soil in which the new elements of life were 
to come forth ; the beginning of another state of man, 
in which language and mythology and philosophy 
were no longer to exert the same constraining power 
as in the ancient world. The civilized portion of 
mankind were becoming of one speech, the diffusion 
of which along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea 
made a way for the entrance of Christianity into the 
human understanding, just as the Roman Empire pre- 
pared the framework of its outward history. The 
first of all languages " for glory and for beauty " had 
become the " common " dialect of the Macedonian 
kingdoms : it had been moulded in the schools of 
Alexandria to the ideas of the East and the religious 
wants of Jews. Neither was it any violence to its 
nature to be made the vehicle of the new truths 
which were springing up in the heart of man. The 
definiteness, and absence of reflectiveness, in the ear- 
lier forms of human speech, would have imposed a sort 
of limit on the freedom and spirituality of the gospel : 
even the Greek of Plato would have " coldly furnished 
forth " the words of " eternal life." A religion which 
was to be universal required the divisions of lan- 
guages, as of nations, to be in some degree broken 
down. (" Poena linguarum dispersit homines, donum 
linguarum in unum collegit.") But this community 
or freedom of language was accompanied by corre- 
sponding defects : it had lost its logical precision ; it 
was less coherent, and more under the influence of 



ON THE mXERPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 431 

association. It might be compared to a garment which 
allowed and yet impeded the exercise of the mind by- 
being too large and loose for it. 

From the inner life of Scripture it is time to pass on 
to the consideration of this outward form, including 
that other framework of modes of thought, and figures 
of speech, which is between the two. A knowledge 
of the original language is a necessary qualification 
of the interpreter of Scripture. It takes away at 
least one chance of error in the explanation of a 
passage ; it removes one of the films which have 
gathered over the page ; it brings the meaning home 
in a more intimate and subtle way than a translation 
could do. To this, however, another qualification 
should be added ; which is, the logical power to per- 
ceive the meaning of words in reference to their con- 
text. And there is a worse fault than ignorance of 
Greek in the interpretation of the New Testament ; 
that is, ignorance of any language. The Greek 
Fathers, for example, are far from being the best 
verbal commentators, because their knowledge of 
Greek often leads them away from the drift of the 
passage. The minuteness of the study in our own 
day has also a tendency to introduce into the text 
associations which are not really found there. There 
is a danger of making words mean too much : re- 
finements of signification " are drawn out of them, 
perhaps contained in their etymology, which are lost 
in common use and parlance. There is the error of 
interpreting every particle as though it were a link in 
the argument, instead of being, as is often the case, 
an excrescence of style. The verbal critic magnifies 
his art ; which is really great in ^schylus or Pindar, 
but not of equal importance in the interpretation of 



432 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

the simpler language of the New Testament. His 
love of scholarship will sometimes lead him to im- 
press a false system on words and constructions. A 
great critic,* who has commented on the three first 
chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians, has cer- 
tainly afforded a proof that it is possible to read the 
New Testament under a distorting influence from clas- 
sical Greek. The tendency gains support from the un- 
defined feeling that Scripture does not come behind 
in excellence of language any more than of thought ; 
and if not, as in former days, the classic purity of the 
Greek of the New Testament, yet its certainty and 
accuracy, the assumption of which, as any other as- 
sumption, is only the parent of inaccuracy, is still 
maintained. 

The study of the language of the New Testament 
has suffered in another way by following too much in 
the track of classical scholarship. All dead languages 
which have passed into the hands of grammarians 
have given rise to questions which have either no 
result, or in which the certainty, or, if certain, the im- 
portance of the result, is out of proportion to the labor 
spent in attaining it. The field is exhausted by great 
critics, and then subdivided among lesser ones. The 
subject, unlike that of physical science, has a limit ; 
and, unless new ground is broken up, — as, for exam- 
ple, in mythology or comparative philology, — is apt 
to grow barren. Though it is not true to say that 
" we know as much about the Greeks and Romans 
as we ever shall," it is certain that we run a danger, 
from the deficiency of material, of wasting time 
in questions which do not add anything to real 

* Herman. 



ON THE IXTEEPKETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 433 

knowledge, or in conjectures which must always re- 
main uncertain, and may, in turn, give way to other 
conjectures in the next generation. Little points may 
be of great importance when rightly determined, be- 
cause the observation of them tends to quicken the 
instinct of language ; but conjectures about little 
things, or rules respecting them, which were not in 
the mind of Greek authors themselves, are not of 
equal value. There is the scholasticism of philology, 
not only in the Alexandrian, but in our own times ; 
as, in the middle ages, there was the scholasticism of 
philosophy. Questions of mere orthography, about 
which there cannot be said to have been a right or 
wrong, have been pursued almost with a Rabbinical 
minuteness. The story of the scholar who regretted 
" that he had not concentrated his life on the dative 
case " is hardly a caricature of the spirit of such in- 
quiries. The form of notes to the classics often 
seems to arise out of a necessity for observing a cer- 
tain proportion between the commentary and the 
text. And the same tendency is noticeable in many 
of the critical and philological observations which are 
made on the New Testament. The field of biblical 
criticism is narrower, and its materials more frag- 
mentary : so, too, the minuteness and uncertainty 
of the questions raised has been greater. For ex- 
ample, the discussions respecting the chronology of 
St. Paul's life and his second imprisonment ; or 
about the identity of James, the brother of the Lord ; 
or, in another department, respecting the use of 
the G-reek article, — have gone far beyond the line 
of utility. 

There seem to be reasons for doubting whether 
any considerable light can be thrown on the New 
19 BB 



434 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

Testament from inquiry into the language. Such in- 
quiries are popuhxr, because they are safe ; but their 
popularity is not the measure of their use. It has not 
been sufl5ciently considered, that the difl&culties of the 
New Testament are for the most part common to the 
Greek and the English. The noblest translation in 
the world has a few great errors, more than half of 
them in the text ; but " we do it violence " to hag- 
gle over the words. Minute corrections of tenses or 
particles ai*e no good : they spoil the English, without 
bemg nearer the Greek. Appai-ent mistranslations are 
often due to a better knowledge of English rather than 
a worse knowledge of Greek. It is true that the sig- 
nification of a few uucommon expressions, e.g., e^ovo-la, 
eTTi^dXayv, o-vvarrayo/jLevoi, /c. t. X., is yet uncertain; but 
no result of consequence would follow from the attain- 
ment of absolute certainty respecting the meaning of any 
of these. A more promismg field opens to the interpre- 
ter in the examination of theological terms, such as 
''faith" (Tr/trrt?), '^ grace" (X"P*^)j "righteousness" 
(SiKaioavvrj^, " sanctification " (^ciyiaa^o<:), " the law" 
Qi'ofMOs}, "the spirit" {ttvcv^o)^ 'Mhe comforter" 
(jrapaKXrjTo^^j ttc, provided always tliat the use of 
such terms in the Xew Testament is clearly separated 
(1) from tlieir derivation or previous use in classical 
or Alexandrian Greek ; (2) from their after-use ui the 
Fathers and in systems of theology. To which may be 
added another select class of words, descriptive of the 
offices or customs of the Apostolic Church ; such 
as "apostle" QcnroaroXo^')^ "bishop" (eTr/o-AfOTTO?), 
"elder" (TrpeajSvrepo^)^ " deacon and deaconess " (o 
Kal Tj Bidfcopo<;^, "love-feast" (rtyaVat), "the Lord's 
day" (^; /cvpia.-cr} rj^epa)^ <tc. It is a lexilogus of these 
and similar terms, rather than a lexicon of the entire 



ON THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTUEE. 435 

Greek Testament, that is required. Interesting sub- 
jects of real inquiry are also the comparison of the 
Greek of the New Testament with modern Greek on 
the one hand, and the Greek of the LXX. on the 
other. It is not likely, however, that they will afford 
much more help than they have already done in the 
elucidation of the Greek of the New Testament. 

It is for others to investigate the language of the 
Old Testament, to which the preceding remarks are 
only in part applicable. (It may be observed in pass- 
ing, of this as of any other old language, that not the 
later form of the language, but the cognate dialects, 
must ever be the chief source of its illustration ; for, in 
every ancient language antecedent or contemporary 
forms, not the subsequent ones, afford the real insight 
into its nature and structure. It must also be admitted 
that very great and real obscurities exist in the Eng- 
lish translation of the Old Testament, which even a 
superficial acquaintance with the original has a ten- 
dency to remove.) Leaving, however, to others the 
consideration of the Semitic languages which raise 
questions of a different kind from the Hellenistic 
Greek, we will offer a few remarks on the latter. 
Much has been said of the increasing accuracy of 
our knowledge of the language of the New Testament. 
The old Hebraistic method of explaining difiiculties 
of language or construction has retired within very 
narrow limits : it might probably, with advantage, be 
confined to still narrower ones (if it have any place 
at all, except in the Apocalypse or the Gospel of St. 
Matthew). There is, perhaps, some confusion be- 
tween accuracy of our knowledge of language, and 
the accuracy of language itself ; which is also strong- 
ly maintained. It is observed that the usages of 



436 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

barbarous as well as civilized nations conform perfect- 
ly to grammatical rules ; that the uneducated in all 
countries have certain laws of speech as much as 
Shakespeare or Bacon : the usages of Lucian, it may- 
be said, are as regular as those of Plato, even when 
they are different. Tlie decay of language seems 
rather to witness to the permanence than to the 
changeableness of its structure : it is the flesh, not 
the bones, that begin to drop off. But such general 
remarks, although just, afford but little help in de- 
termining the character of the Greek of the New 
Testament, which has, of course, a certain system ; 
failing in which, it would cease to be a language. 
Some further illustration is needed of the change 
wliich has passed upon it. All languages do not de- 
cay in the same manner ; and the influence of decay 
in the same language may be different in different 
countries ; when used in writing and in speaking ; 
when applied to the matters of ordinary life, and to 
the higher truths of philosophy or religion. And the 
degeneracy of language itself is not a mere principle 
of dissolution, but creative also : while dead and rigid 
in some of its uses^ it is elastic and expansive in 
others. The decay of an ancient language is the be- 
ginning of the construction of a modern one. The 
loss of some usages gives a greater precision or free- 
dom to others. The logical element — as, for example, 
in the mediaeval Latin — will probably be strongest 
when the poetical has vanished. A great movement, 
like the Reformation in Germany, passing over a 
nation, may give a new birth also to its language. 
These remarks may be applied to the Greek of 
the New Testament, which, although classed vaguely 
under the " common dialect," has, nevertheless, many 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 437 

features which are altogether peculiar to itself, and 
such as are found in no other remains of ancient lit- 
erature. 1. It is more unequal in style, even in the 
same books ; that is to say, more original and plastic 
in one part, more rigid and unpliable in another. 
There is a want of the continuous power to frame a 
paragraph, or to arrange clauses in subordination to 
each other, even to the extent to which it was pos- 
sessed by a Greek scholiast or rhetorician. On the 
other hand, there is a fulness of lifs, " a new birth,'^ 
in the use of abstract terms, which is not found else- 
where, after the golden age of Greek philosophy. 
Almost the only passage in the New Testament which 
reads like a Greek period of the time, is the first para- 
graph of the Gospel according to St. Luke, and the 
corresponding words of the Acts. But the power and 
meaning of the characteristic words of the New Tes- 
tament is in remarkable contrast with the vapid and 
general use of the same words in Philo about the same 
time. There is also a sort of lyrical passion in some 
passages (1 Cor. xiii. ; 2 Cor. vi. 6-10 ; xi. 21-33), 
which is a new thing in the literature of the world ; 
to which, at any rate, no Greek author of a later age 
furnishes any parallel. 2. Though written, the Greek 
of the New Testament partakes of the character of a 
spoken language : it is more lively and simple, and 
less structural, than ordinary writing ; a peculiarity 
of style which further agrees with the circumstance, 
that the Epistles of St. Paul were not written with his 
own hand, but probably dictated to an amanuensis ; 
and that the Gospels also probably originate in an oral 
narrative. 3. The ground-colors of the language may 
be said to be two : first, the LXX., which is modified, 
secondly, by the spoken Greek of Eastern countries, 



438 ON THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTUEE. 

and the differences which might be expected to arise 
between a translation and an original. Many Hebra- 
isms would occur in the Greek of a translator, which 
would never have come to his pen but for the influ- 
ence of the work which he was translating. 4. To 
which may be added a few Latin and Chaldee words, 
and a few Rabbinical formula?. The influence of 
Hebrew or Chaldee in the New Testament is for the 
most part at a distance, in the background, acting not 
directly, but mediately, through the LXX. It has 
much to do with the clausular structure and general 
form, but hardly anything with the grammatical 
usage. Philo, too, did not know Hebrew, or at least 
the Hebrew Scriptures ; yet there is also a " medi- 
ate " influence of Hebrew traceable in his writings. 
5. There is an element of constraint in the style of the 
New Testament, arising from the circumstance of its 
authors writing in a language which was not their 
own. This constraint shows itself in the repetition of 
words and phrases ; in the verbal oppositions and 
anacolutha of St. Paul ; in the short sentences of St. 
John. This is further increased by the fact that the 
writers of the New Testament were " unlearned men," 
who had not the same power of writing as of speech. 
Moreover, as has been often remarked, the difficulty 
of composition increases in proportion to the great- 
ness of the subject : e. g. the narrative of Thucydides 
is easy and intelligible, while his reflections and 
speeches are full of confusion ; the effort to con- 
centrate seems to interfere with the consecutiveness 
and fluency of ideas. Something of this kind is dis- 
cernible in those passages of the Epistles in which the 
Apostle St. Paul is seeking to set forth the opposite 
sides of God's dealing with men : e. g. Rom. iii. 1-9, 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 439 

ix., X. ; or in which the sequence of the thought is 
interrupted by the conflict of emotions, 1 Cor. ix. 20 ; 
Gal. iv. 11-20. 6. The power of the gospel over 
language must be recognized, showing itself, first of 
all, in the original and consequently variable significa- 
tion of words (Tr/o-Ti?, %«/3i?, a-coTi^pia')^ which is also 
more comprehensive and human than the heretical 
usage of many of the same terms, — e. g. yva)o-t<i 
("knowledge"), (rocj^ta ("wisdom"), ktlgl^ ("crea- 
ture, creation ") ; secondly, in a peculiar use of some 
constructions, such as hucaiocrvvT] Qeov (" righteous- 
ness of God"), TTLa-Tt^ Irjcrov Xpccrrov ("faith of 
Jesus Christ"), ev Xpiarcp ("in Christ"), ^v Beep 
("in God"), vTrep r}ficov ("for us"), in which the 
meaning of the genitive case or of the preposition 
almost escapes our notice, from familiarity with the 
sound of it. Lastly, the degeneracy of the Greek 
language is traceable in the failure of syntactical 
power ; in the insertion of prepositions to denote 
relations of thought, which classical Greek, would 
have expressed by the case only ; in the omission of 
them when classical Greek would have required them ; 
in the incipient use of Iva with the subjunctive for the 
infinitive ; in the confusion of ideas of cause and 
effect ; in the absence of the article in the case of an 
increasing number of words which are passing into 
proper names ; in the loss of the finer shades of dif- 
ference in the negative particles ; in the occasional 
confusion of the aorist and perfect ; in excessive fond- 
ness for particles of reasoning or inference ; in various 
forms of apposition, especially that of the word to the 
sentence ; in the use, sometimes emphatic, sometimes 
only pleonastic, of the personal and demonstrative 
pronouns. These are some of the signs that the lan- 
guage is breaking up, and losing its structure. 



440 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

Our knowledge of the New Testament is derived 
almost exclusively from itself. Of the language, as 
well as of the subject, it may be truly said, that what 
other writers contribute is nothing in comparison of 
that which is gained from observation of the text. 
Some inferences which may be gc^thcred from this 
general fact are the following : First, that less weight 
should be given to lexicons, that is, to the authority 
of other Greek writers, and more to the context. The 
use of a word in a new sense, the attribution of a neu- 
ter meaning to a verb elsewhere passive (Rom. iii. 9, 
irpoe^o^eOa)^ the resolution of the compound into two 
simple notions (Gal. iii. 1, 'Trpoeypd(\)r]^^ — tliese, when 
the context requires it, are not to be set aside by the 
scholar because sanctioned by no known examples. 
The same remark applies to grammars as well as lexi- 
cons. We cannot be certain that hia witli the accusa- 
tive never has the same meaning as ha with the 
genitive (Gal. iv. 13 ; Phil. i. 15), or that the article 
always retains its defining power (2 Cor. i. 17 ; Acts 
xvii. 1), or that the perfect is never used in place of 
the aorist (1 Cor. xv. 4 ; Rev. v. 7, <fec.) ; still less can 
we affirm that the latter end of a sentence never for- 
gets tJie beginning (Rom. ii. 17-21 ; v. 12-18 ; ix. 22 ; 
xvi. 25-27; &c., &c.). Foreign influences tend to 
derange the strong natural perception or remembrance 
of the analogy of our own language. That is very 
likely to have occurred in the case of some of the 
writers of the New Testament : tliat there is such a 
derangement, is a fact. There is no probability in fa- 
vor of St. Paul writing in broken sentences ; but there 
is no improbability which should lead us to assume in 
such sentences continuous grammar and thought, as 
appears to have been the feeling of the copyists who 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 441 

have corrected the anacolutha. The occurrence of 
them further justifies the interpreter in using some 
freedom with other passages in which the syntax does 
not absolutely break down. Wlien " confusion of two 
constructions," " meaning to say one thing, and finish- 
ing with another : " " saymg two things in one, instead 
of disposing them in their logical sequence," — are 
attributed to the apostle, the use of these and similar 
expressions is defended by the fact, that more numer- 
ous anacolutha occur in St. Paul's writings than in 
any equal portion of the New Testament, and far more 
than in the writings of any other Greek author of 
equal length. 

Passing from the grammatical structure, we may 
briefly consider the logical character of the language 
of the New Testament. Two things should be here 
distinguished, — the logical form and the logical se- 
quence of thought. Some ages have been remarkable 
for the former of these two characteristics : they have 
dealt in opposition, contradiction, climax, pleonasm, 
reason within reason, and the like ; mere statements 
taking the form of argimients, each sentence seeming 
to be a link in a chain. In such periods of literature, 
the appearance of logic is rhetorical, and is to be set 
down to the style. That is the case with many pas- 
sages in the New Testament which are studded with 
logical or rhetorical formulae, especially in the Epistles 
of St. Paul. Notliing can be more simple or natu- 
ral than the object of the writer ; yet " forms of the 
schools" appear (whether learnt at the feet of Gama- 
liel, that reputed master of Greek learning, or not), 
which imply a degree of logical or rhetorical training. 

The observation of this rhetorical or logical element 
has a bearing on the interpretation of Scripture ; for 
19* 



442 ON THE miEEPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

it leads us to distinguish between the superficial con- 
nection of words and the real connection of thoughts. 
Otherwise, injustice is done to the argument of the 
sacred writer, who may be supposed to violate logical 
rules, of which he is unconscious. For example, the 
argument of Rom. iii. 19 may be classed by the logi- 
cians under some head of fallacy (" Ex aliquo non se- 
quitur omnis ") ; the series of inferences which follow 
one another in Rom. i. 16 - 18 are for the most part 
different aspects or statements of the same truth. So 
in Rom. i. 32, the climax rather appears to be an anti- 
cUmax. But to dwell on these things interferes with 
the true perception of the apostle's meaning, which is 
not contained in the repetitions of ya/? by which it is 
hooked together ; nor are we accurately to weigh 
the proportions expressed by his ov jiovov — aWa koI ; 
or TToXXw ixaWov : neither need we suppose, that, where 
fjiev is found alone, there was a reason for the omission 
of 3e (Rom. i. 8 ; iii. 2) ; or that the opposition of 
words and sentences is always the opposition of ideas 
(Rom. V. 7 ; X. 10). It is true that these and sim- 
ilar forms or distinctions of language admit of trans- 
lation into English ; and, in every case, the inter- 
preter may find some point of view in which the sim- 
plest truth of feeling may be drawn out in an anti- 
thetical or argumentative form. But whether these 
points of view were in the apostle's mind at the time 
of wi'iting may be doubted : the real meaning, or ker- 
nel, seems to lie deeper, and to be more within. When 
we pass from the study of each verse to survey the 
whole at a greater distance, the form of thought is 
again seen to be unimportant in comparison of the 
truth which is contained in it. The same remark may 
be extended to the opposition, not only of words, but 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 443 

of ideas, which is found in the Scriptures generally, 
and almost seems to be inherent in human language 
itself. The law is opposed to faith, good to evil, the 
spirit to the flesh, light to darkness, the world to the 
believer ; the sheep are set " on his right hand, but 
the goats on the left." The influence of this logical 
opposition has been great, and not always without 
abuse in practice ; for the opposition is one of ideas 
only, which is not realized m fact. Experience shows 
us, not that there are two classes of men animated by 
two opposing principles, but an infinite number of 
classes or individuals from the lowest depths of misery 
and sin to the highest perfection of which human 
nature is capable ; the best not wholly good, the worst 
not entirely evil. But the figure or mode of repre- 
sentation changes these differences of degree into 
differences of kind ; and we often think and speak 
and act, in reference both to ourselves and others, 
as though the figure were altogether a reality. 

Other questions arise out of the analysis of the 
modes of thought of Scripture. Unless we are willing 
to use words without inquiring into their meaning, it 
is necessary for us to arrange them in some relation 
to our own minds. The modes of thought of the Old 
Testament are not the same with those of the New, 
and those of the New are only partially the same with 
those in use among ourselves at the present day. The 
education of the human mind may be traced as clear- 
ly from the book of Genesis to the Epistles of St. 
Paul, as from Homer to Plato and Aristotle. When 
we hear St. Paul speaking of " body and soul and 
spirit," we know that such language as this would 
not occur in the books of Moses or in the Prophet 
Isaiah. It has the color of a later age, in which 



444 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

abstract terms have taken the place of expressions 
derived from material objects. When we proceed fur- 
ther to compare these or other words or expressions 
of St. Paul with "the body and mind," or "mind" 
and " matter," which is a distinction, not only of phi- 
losophy, but of common language among ourselves, it 
is not easy at once to determine the relation between 
them. Familiar as is the sound of both expressions, 
many questions arise when we begin to compare 
them. 

This is the metaphysical difficulty in the interpre- 
tation of Scripture, which it is better not to ignore, 
because the consideration of it is necessary to the 
understanding of many passages, and also because it 
may return upon us in the form of materialism or 
scepticism. To some, who are not aware how little 
words affect the nature of things, it may seem to raise 
speculations of a very serious kind. Their doubts 
would, perhaps, find expression in some such excla- 
mations as the following : " How is religion possi- 
ble, when modes of thought are shifting, and words 
changing their meaning, and statements of doctrine, 
though ' starched ' with philosophy, are in perpet- 
ual danger of dissolution from metaphysical analy- 
sis ? " 

The answer seems to be, that Christian truth is 
uot dependent on the fixedness of modes of thought. 
The metaphysician may analyze the ideas of the mind, 
just as the physiologist may analyze the powers or 
parts of the bodily frame, yet morality and social 
life still go on, as, in the body, digestion is uninter- 
rupted. That is not an illustration only: it repre- 
sents the fact. Though we had no words for " mind, 
matter, soul, body," and the like, Christianity would 



ON THE IKTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 445 

l^main^the same. This is obvious, whether we think 
of the case of the poor, who understand such distinc- 
tions very imperfectly, or of those nations of the 
earth who have no precisely corresponding division 
of ideas. It is not of that subtle or evanescent char- 
acter which is liable to be lost in shifting the use of 
terms. Indeed, it is an advantage at times to discard 
these terms, with the view of getting rid of the op- 
positions to which they give rise. No metaphysical 
analysis can prevent " our taking up the cross and 
following Christ," or receiving the kingdom of Heaven 
as little children. To analyze the " trichotomy " of 
St. Paul is interesting as a chapter in the history of 
the human mind, and necessary as a part of biblical 
exegesis ; but it has nothing to do with the religion 
of Christ. Christian duties may be enforced, and 
the life of Christ may be the centre of our thoughts, 
whether we speak of reason and faith, of soul and 
body, or of mind and matter, or adopt a mode 
of speech which dispenses with any of these divis- 
ions. 

Connected with the modes of thought or repre- 
sentation in Scripture are the figures of speech of 
Scripture, about which the same question may be 
asked : " Wliat division can we make between the 
figure and the reality ? " And the answer seems to 
be of the same kind, that " we cannot precisely draw 
the line between them." Language, and especially 
the language of Scripture, does not admit of any 
sharp distinction. The simple expressions of one age 
become the allegories or figures of another : many of 
those in the New Testament are taken from the Old. 
But neither is there anything really essential in the 
form of these figures ; nay, the literal application of 



446 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

many of them has been a great stumbling-block to the 
reception of Christianity. A recent commentator on 
Scripture appears willing to peril religion on the 
literal truth of such an expression as " We shall be 
caught up to meet the Lord in the air." Would he 
be equally ready to stake Christianity on the literal 
meaning of the words, " Where their worm dieth not, 
and the fire is not quenched " ? 

Of what has been said, this is the sum: "That 
Scripture, like other books, has one meaning, which 
is to be gathered from itself, without reference to the 
adaptations of fathers or divines, and without regard 
to a priori notions about its nature and origin. It is 
to be interpreted like other books, with attention to 
the character of its authors, and the prevailing state 
of civilization and knowledge, with allowance for 
peculiarities of style and language, and modes of 
thought, and figures of speech ; yet not without a 
sense, that, as we read, there grows upon us the wit- 
ness of God in the world, anticipating in a rude and 
primitive age the truth that was to be, shining more 
and more unto the perfect day in the life of Christ, 
which again is reflected from different points of view 
in the teachings of his apostles." 

§5. 

It has been a principal aim of the preceding pages 
to distinguish the interpretation from the application 
of Scripture. Many of the errors alluded to arise 
out of a confusion of the two. The present is nearer 
to us than the past ; the circumstances which sur- 
round us preoccupy our thoughts : it is only by an 
effort that we reproduce the ideas or events or per- 
sons of other ages. And thus, quite naturally, almost 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 447 

by a law of the human mind, the application of Scrip- 
ture takes the place of its original meaning : and 
the question is, not how to get rid of this natural 
tendency, but how we may have the true use of it ; 
for it cannot be got rid of, or rather is one of the 
chief instruments of religious usefulness in the world. 
" Ideas must be given through something : " those of 
religion find their natural expression in the words 
of Scripture, in the adaptation of which to another 
state of life it is hardly possible that the first intention 
of the writers should be always preserved. Interpre- 
tation is the province of few : it requires a finer 
perception of language and a higher degree of cul- 
tivation than is attained by the majority of mankind. 
But applications are made by all, from the philoso- 
pher reading " God in History," to the poor woman 
who finds in them a response to her prayers, and the 
solace of her daily life. In the hour of death, we do 
not want critical explanations : in most cases, those 
to whom they would be ofiered are incapable of un- 
derstanding them. A few words, breathing the sense 
of the whole Christian world, such as " I know that 
my Redeemer liveth " (though the exact meaning of 
them may be doubtful to the Hebrew scholar) ; "I 
shall go to him, but he shall not return to me," — 
touch a chord which would never be reached by the 
most skilful exposition of the argument of one of St. 
Paul's Epistles. 

There is also a use of Scripture in education and 
literature. This literary use, though secondary to the 
religious one, is not unimportant. It supplies a com- 
mon language to the educated and uneducated, in 
which the best and highest thoughts of both are 
expressed : it is a medium between the abstract 



448 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

notions of the one and the simple feelings of the 
other. To the poor especially, it conveys, in the form 
which they are most capable of receiving, the les- 
son of history and life. The beauty and power of 
speech and writing would be greatly impaired, if 
the Scriptures ceased to be known or used among 
us. The orator seems to catch from them a sort 
of inspiration. In the simple words of Scripture 
which he stamps anew, the philosopher often finds 
his most pregnant expressions. If modern times 
have been richer in the wealth of abstract thought, 
the contribution of earlier ages to the mind of the 
world has not been less, but perhaps greater, in 
supplying the poetry of language. There is no 
such treasury of instruments and materials as Scrip- 
ture. The loss of Homer, or the loss of Shakespeare, 
would have affected the whole series of Greek or 
English authors who follow. But the disappearance 
of the Bible from the books which the world con- 
tains would produce results far greater: we can 
scarcely conceive the degree in which it w^ould 
alter literature and language, — the ideas of the 
educated and philosophical, as well as the feelings, 
and habits of mind, of the poor. If it has been 
said, with an allowable hyperbole, that " Homer is 
Greece," with much more truth may it be said that 
" the Bible is Christendom." 

Many, by whom considerations of this sort will 
be little understood, may, nevertheless, recognize 
the use made of the Old Testament in the New. 
The religion of Christ was first taught by an ap- 
plication of the words of the Psalms and the Proph- 
ets. Our Lord himself sanctions this application. 
^' Can there be a better use of Scripture than that 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 449 

which is made by Scripture ? " — " Or any more likely 
method of teaching the truths of Christianity than 
that by which they were first taught?" For it may 
be argued, that the critical interpretation of Scrip- 
ture is a device almost of yesterday: it is the voca- 
tion of the scholar or philosopher, not of the apostle 
or prophet. The new truth which was introduced 
into the Old Testament, rather than the old truth 
which was found there, was the salvation and the 
conversion of the world. There are many quotations 
from the Psalms and the Prophets in the Epistles, 
in which the meaning is quickened or spiritualized ; 
but hardly any, probably none, which is based on the 
original sense or context. That is not so singular a 
phenomenon as may at first sight be imagined. It 
may appear strange to us that Scripture should be 
interpreted in Scripture, in a manner not altogether 
in agreement with modern criticism ; but would it not 
be more strange that it should be interpreted other- 
wise than in agreement with the ideas of the age or 
country in which it was written ? The observation 
that there is such an agreement leads to two conclu- 
sions, which have a bearing on our present subject : 
first, it is a reason for not insisting on the applica- 
tions which the New Testament makes of passages in 
the Old, as their original meaning ; secondly, it gives 
authority and precedent for the use of similar appli- 
cations in our own day. 

But, on the other hand, though interwoven with 
literature, though common to all ages of the Church, 
though sanctioned by our Lord and his apostles, it is 
easy to see that such an employment of Scripture is 
liable to error and perversion. For it may not only 
receive a new meaning : it may be applied in a spirit 

CO 



450 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

alien to itself. It may become the symbol of fanat- 
icism, the cloak of malice, the disguise of policy. 
Cromwell at Drogheda, quoting Scripture to his sol- 
diers ; the well-known attack on the Puritans in the 
State service for the Restoration, "Not every one that 
saith imto me, Lord, Lord ; " the reply of the Venetian 
ambassador to the suggestion of Wolsey, that Yenice 
should take a lead in Italy, " which was only the earth 
is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof," — are examples 
of such uses. In former times, it was a real and not 
an imaginary fear, that the wars of the Lord in the 
Old Testament might arouse a fire in the bosom of 
Franks and Huns. In our own day, such dangers 
have passed away : it is only a figure of speech when 
the preacher says, " Gird on thy sword, thou most 
mighty ! " The warlike passions of men arc not roused 
by quotations from Scripture ; nor can states of life 
such as slavery or polygamy, which belong to a past 
age, be defended, at least in England, by the example 
of the Old Testament. The danger or error is of 
another kind ; more subtle, but hardly less real. For, 
if we are permitted to apply Scripture under the 
pretence of interpreting it, the language of Scrip- 
ture becomes only a mode of expressing the public 
feeling or opinion of our own day. Any passing 
phase of politics or art, or spurious philanthropy, may 
have a kind of scriptural authority. The words that 
are used are the words of the prophet or evangelist ; 
but we stand behind, and adapt them to our pur- 
pose. Hence it is necessary to consider the limits 
and manner of a just adaptation ; how much may be 
allowed for the sake of ornament ; how far the Scrip- 
ture in all its details, may be regarded as an allegory 
of human life ; where the true analogy begins ; how 



ON THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 451 

far the interpretation of Scripture will serve as a cor- 
rective to its practical abuse. 

Truth seems to require that we should separate 
mere adaptations from the original meaning of Scrip- 
ture. It is not honest or reasonable to confound illus- 
tration with argument, in theology, any more than in 
other subjects. For example, if a preacher chooses 
to represent the condition of a church or of an indi- 
vidual in the present day under the figure of Elijah 
left alone among the idolatrous tribes of Israel, such 
an allusion is natural enough ; but if he goes on to 
argue that individuals are therefore justified in re- 
maining in what they believe to be an erroneous 
communion, — that is a mere appearance of argument 
which ought not to have the slightest weight with a 
man of sense. Such a course may indeed be perfectly 
justifiable, but not on the ground that a prophet of the 
Lord once did so, two thousand five hundred years 
ago. Not in this sense were the lives of the prophets 
written for our instruction. There are many impor- 
tant morals conveyed by them, but only so far as they 
themselves represent -universal principles of justice 
and love. These universal principles they clothe with 
flesh and blood : they show them to us written on the 
hearts of men of like passions with ourselves. The 
prophecies, again, admit of many applications to the 
Christian Church or to the Christian life. There is 
no harm in speaking of the Church as the spiritual 
Israel, or in using the imagery of Isaiah respectijig 
Messiah's kingdom, as the type of good things to 
come. But when it is gravely urged, that, from such 
passages as " Kings shall be thy nursing fathers," we 
are to collect the relations of Church and State ; or, 
from the pictorial description of Isaiah, that it is to be 



452 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

inferred there will be a reign of Christ on earth, — 
that is a mere assumption of the forms of reasoning 
by the imagination. Nor is it a healthful or manly tone 
of feeling which depicts the political opposition to the 
Church in our own day, under imagery which is bor- 
rowed from the desolate Sion of the captivity. Scrip- 
ture is apt to come too readily to the lips, when we 
are pouring out our own weaknesses, or enlarging on 
some favorite theme, — perhaps idealizing, in the lan- 
guage of prophecy, the feebleness of preaching or 
missions in the present day, or from the want of some- 
thing else to say. In many discussions on these and 
similar subjects, the position of the Jewish king, 
church, priest, has led to a confusion, partly caused 
by the use of similar words in modern senses among 
ourselves. The King or Queen of England may be 
called the Anointed of the Lord ; but we should not 
therefore imply that the attributes of sovereignty are 
the same as those which belonged to King David. All 
these are figures of speech, the employment of which 
is too common, and has been injurious to religion, be- 
cause it prevents our looking at the facts of history 
or life as they truly are. 

This is the first step towards a more truthful use 
of Scripture in practice, — the separation of adapta- 
tion from mterpretation. No one, who is engaged in 
preaching or in religious instruction, can be required 
to give up Scripture language : it is the common 
element in which his thoughts and those of his 
hearers move. But he may be asked to distinguish 
the words of Scripture from the truths of Scripture, 
— the means from the end. The least expression 
of Scripture is weighty : it affects the minds of the 
hearers in a way that no other language can. What- 



ON THE INTEEPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 453 

ever responsibility attaches to idle words, attaches in 
still greater degree to the idle or fallacious use of 
Scripture terms. And there is surely a want of proper 
reverence for Scripture, when we confound the weak- 
est and feeblest appUcations of its words with their true 
meaning ; when we avail ourselves of their natural 
power to point them against some enemy ; when we 
divert the eternal words of charity and truth into a 
defence of some passing opinion. For not only in the 
days of the Pharisees, but in our own, the letter has 
been taking the place of the spirit ; the least matters, 
of the gTcatest ; and the primary meaning has been 
lost in the secondary use. 

Other simple cautions may also be added. The ap- 
plications of Scripture should be harmonized, and, 
as it were, interpenetrated with the spirit of the 
gospel, the whole of which should be in every part : 
though the words may receive a new sense, the new 
sense ought to be in agreement with the general 
truth. They should be used to bring home practical 
precepts, not to send the imagination on a voyage 
of discovery : they are not the real foundation of our 
faith in another world ; nor can they, by pleasant 
pictures, add to our knowledge of it. They should 
not confound the accidents with the essence of re- 
ligion ; the restrictions and burdens of the Jewish 
law with the freedom of the gospel; the things 
which Moses allowed for the hardness of the heart, 
with the perfection of the teaching of Christ. They 
should avoid the form of arguments, or they will in- 
sensibly be used or understood to mean more than 
they really do. They should be subjected to an 
overruling principle, which is the heart and con- 
science of the Christian teacher, who indeed " stands 



454 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

behind them," not to make them the vehicles of his 
own opinions, but as the expressions of justice and 
truth and love. 

And here the critical interpretation of Scripture 
comes in, and exercises a corrective influence on its 
popular use. We have already admitted that criticism 
is not for the multitude : it is not what the Scripture 
terms the gospel preached for the poor. Yet, indi- 
rectly passing from the few to the many, it has borne 
a great part in the Reformation of religion. It has 
cleared the eye of the mind to understand the original 
meaning. It was a sort of criticism which supported 
the struggle of the sixteenth century against the Ro- 
man Catholic Church : it is criticism that is leading 
Protestants to doubt whether the doctrine that the 
Pope is Antichrist, which has descended from the 
same period, is really discoverable in Scripture. 
Even the isolated thinker, against whom the relig- 
ious world is taking up arms, has an influence on 
his opponents. The force of observations which are 
based on reason and fact remains when the tide of 
religious or party feeling is gone down. Criticism has 
also a healing influence in clearing away what may be 
termed the sectarianism of knowledge. Without crit- 
icism, it would be impossible to reconcile history and 
science with revealed religion : they must remain for- 
ever in a hostile and defiant attitude. Instead of be- 
ing, like other records, subject to the conditions of 
knowledge which existed in an early stage of the 
world, Scripture would be regarded, on tlie one side, 
as the work of organic inspiration ; and as a lying 
imposition, on the other. 

The real unity of Scripture, as of man, has also 
a relation to our present subject. Amid all the 



ON THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTUEE. 455 

differences of modes of thought and speech which 
have existed in different ages, of which much is said 
in our own day, there is a common element in human 
nature which bursts through these differences, and 
remains unchanged, because akin to the first instincts 
of our being. The simple feeling of truth and right 
is the same to the Greek or Hindoo as to ourselves. 
However great may be the diversities of human char- 
acter, there is a point at which these diversities end, 
and unity begins to appear. Now, this admits of an 
application to the books of Scripture, as well as to the 
world generally. Written at many different times, in 
more than one language, some of them in fragments, 
they, too, have a common element, of which the 
preacher may avail himself. This element is twofold, 
— partly divine, and partly human ; the revelation 
of the truth and righteousness of God, and the cry 
of the human heart towards him. Every part of 
Scripture tends to raise us above ourselves, — to give 
us a deeper sense of the feebleness of man, and of the 
wisdom and power of God. It has a sort of kindred, 
as Plato would say, with religious truth everywhere in 
the world. It agrees also with the imperfect stages 
of knowledge and faith in human nature, and answers 
to its inarticulate cries. The universal truth easily 
breaks through the accidents of time and place in 
which it is involved. Although we cannot apply 
Jewish institutions to the Christian world, or venture, 
in reliance on some text, to resist the tide of civiliza- 
tion on which we are borne, yet it remains neverthe- 
less to us, as well as to the Jews and first Christians, 
that "righteousness exalteth a nation," and that " love 
is the fulfilling, not of the Jewish law only, but of all 
law." 



456 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

In some cases, we have only to enlarge the mean- 
ing of Scripture to apply it even to the novelties and 
peculiarities of our own times. The world changes ; 
but the human heart remains the same : events and 
details are different ; but the principle by which they 
are governed, or the rule by which we are to act, is 
not different. When, for example, our Saviour says, 
" Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
you free," it is not likely that these words would have 
conveyed to the minds of the Jews who heard liim 
any notion of the perplexities of doubt or inquiry ; 
yet we cannot suppose that our Saviour, were he to 
come again upon earth, would refuse thus to extend 
them. The Apostle St. Paul, when describing the 
gospel, which is to the Greek foolishness, speaks also 
of a higher wisdom wliicli is known to those who 
are perfect. Neither is it unfair for us to apply this 
passage to that reconcilement of faith and knowledge 
which may be termed Christian philosophy, as the 
nearest equivalent to its language in our own day. 
Such words, again, as " Why seek ye the living among 
the dead ? " admit of a great variety of adaptations to 
the circumstances of our own time. Many of these 
adaptations have a real germ in the meaning of the 
words. The precept, " Render unto Caesar the things 
that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are 
God's," may be taken generally as expressing the 
necessity of distinguishing the divine and human, — 
the things that belong to faith, and the things that 
belong to experience. It is worth remarking, in the 
application made of these words by Lord Bacon (" Da 
fidei quae fidei sunt "), that, although the terms 
are altered, yet the circumstance that the form 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 457 

of the sentence is borrowed from Scripture gives them 
point and weight. 

The portion of Scripture which, more than any 
other, is immediately and universally applicable to 
our own times, is doubtless that which is contained 
in the words of Christ himself. The reason is, that 
they are words of the most universal import. They 
do not relate to the circumstances of the time, but to 
the common life of all mankind. You cannot extract 
from them a political creed ; only, " Render unto 
Caesar the things that are Caesar's," and " The scribes 
and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat : whatsoever, there- 
fore, they say unto you, do ; but after their works do 
not." They present to us a standard of truth and 
duty, such as no one can at once and immediately 
practise ; such as, in its perfection, no one has fulfilled 
in this world. But this idealism does not interfere 
with their influence as a religious lesson. Ideals, 
even though unrealized, have effect on our daily life. 
The preacher of the gospel is, or ought to be, aware 
that his calls to repentance, his standard of obliga- 
tions, his lamentations over his own shortcomings or 
those of others, do not at once convert hundreds or 
thousands, as on the day of Pentecost. Yet it does 
not follow that they are thrown away, or that it would 
be well to substitute for them mere prudential or 
economical lessons, lectures on health or sanitary 
improvement ; for they tend to raise men above them- 
selves, ■ — providing them with sabbaths as well as 
working-days, giving them a taste of " the good word 
of God " and of " the powers of the world to come." 
Human nature needs to be idealized : it seems as if it 
took a dislike to itself when presented always in its 
20 



458 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

ordinary attire ; it lives on in the hope of becoming 
better. And the image or hope of a better Ufe, — 
the vision of Christ crucified, — which is held up to 
it, doubtless has an influence ; not like the rushing 
mighty wind of the day of Pentecost : it may rather 
be compared to the leaven " which a woman took and 
hid in three measures of meal till the whole was 
leavened." 

The parables of our Lord are a portion of the New 
Testament, which we may apply in the most easy and 
literal manner. The persons in them are the persons 
among whom we live and move. There are times and 
occasions at which the truths symbolized by them 
come home to the hearts of all who have ever been 
impressed by religion. We have been prodigal sons 
returning to our Father ; servants to whom talents 
have been intrusted ; laborers in the vineyard, inclined 
to murmur at our lot when compared with that of 
others, yet receiving every man his due ; well-satisfied 
Pharisees ; repentant publicans : we have received the 
seed, and the cares of the world have choked it ; 
we hope also at times that we have found the pearl of 
great price after sweeping the house ; we are ready, 
like the good Samaritan, to show kindness to all man- 
kind. Of these circumstances of life, or phases of 
mind, which are typified by the parables, most Chris- 
tians have experience. We may go on to apply 
many of them further to the condition of nations and 
churches. Such a treasury has Christ provided us of 
things new and old, which refer to all time and all 
mankind — may we not say in his own words ? — 
" because he is the Son of man." 

There is no language of Scripture which penetrates 
the individual soul, and embraces all the world in the 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 459 

arms of its love, in the same manner as that of Christ 
liimself. Yet the Epistles contain lessons which are 
not found in the Gospels, or, at least, not expressed 
with the same degree of clearness. For the Epistles 
are nearer to actual life ; they relate to the circum- 
stances of the first believers, to their struggles with 
the world without, to their temptations and divisions 
from within : their subject is not only the doctrine 
of the Christian religion, but the business of the early 
Church. And although their circumstances are not 
our circumstances, — we are not afflicted or persecuted, 
or driven out of the world, but in possession of the 
blessings and security and property of an established 
religion, — yet there is a Christian spirit which infuses 
itself into all circumstances, of which they are a pure 
and living source. It is impossible to gather from a 
few fragmentary and apparently not always consistent 
expressions how the communion was celebrated, or 
the Church ordered ; what was the relative position 
of presbyters and deacons, or the nature of the gift 
of tongues, as a rule for the Church in after-ages. 
Such inquiries have no certain answer, and, at the 
best, are only the subjects of honest curiosity. But 
the words, " Charity never faileth," and " Though I 
speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and 
have not charity, I am nothing," — these have a voice 
which reaches to the end of time. There are no 
questions of meats and drinks now-a-days ; yet the 
noble words of the apostle remain : " If meat make 
my brother to ofiend, I will eat no flesh while the 
world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." 
Moderation in controversy, toleration towards oppo- 
nents or erring members, is a virtue which has been 
thought by many to belong to the development and 



460 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

not to the origin of Christianity, and which is rarely 
found in the commencement of a religion ; bnt les- 
sons of toleration may be gathered from the apostle, 
which have not yet been learned either by theologians 
or by mankind in general. The persecutions and 
troubles which awaited the apostle, no longer await 
us : we cannot, therefore, without unreality, except, 
perhaps, in a very few cases, appropriate his words : 
'' I have fought the good fight ; I have finished my 
course ; I have kept the faith." But that other text 
still sounds gently in our ears : " My strength is per- 
fected in weakness ; " and " when I am weak, then am 
I strong. AYe cannot apply to ourselves the language 
of authority in which the apostle speaks of himself 
as an ambassador for Christ, without something like 
bad taste ; but it is not altogether an imaginary hope, 
that those of us who are ministers of Christ may 
attain to a real imitation of his great diligence, of his 
sympathy with others, and consideration for them, — 
of his willingness to spend and be spent in his Mas- 
ter's service. 

Such are a few instances of the manner in which 
the analogy of faith enables us to apply the words of 
Christ and his apostles, with a strict regard to their 
original meaning. But the Old Testament has also 
its peculiar lessons, which are not conveyed with 
equal point or force in the New. The beginnings of 
human history are themselves a lesson, having a fresh- 
ness as of the early dawn. There are forms of evil 
against which the prophets and the prophetical spirit 
of the law carry on a warfare, in terms almost too 
bold for the way of life of modern times. There, 
more plainly than in any other portion of Scripture, 
is expressed the antagonism of outward and inward, of 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 461 

ceremonial and moral, of mercy and sacrifice. There 
all the masks of hypocrisy are rudely torn asunder, 
in which an unthinking world allows itself to be dis- 
guised. There the relations of rich and poor in the 
sight of God, and their duties towards one another, 
are most clearly enunciated. There the religion of 
suffering first appears, — " adversity, the blessing " 
of the Old Testament as well as of the New. There 
the sorrows and aspirations of the soul find their 
deepest expression and also their consolation. The 
feeble person has an image of himself in the " bruised 
reed ; " the suffering servant of God passes into the 
" beloved one, in whom my soul delighteth." Even 
the latest and most desolate phases of the human mind 
are reflected in Job and Ecclesiastes ; yet not without 
the solemn assertion, that " to fear God and keep his 
commandments " is the beginning and end of all 
things. 

It is true that there are examples in the Old Testa- 
ment which were not written for our instruction ; and 
that, in some instances, precepts or commands are 
attributed to God himself, which must be regarded as 
relative to the state of knowledge which then existed 
of the divine nature, or given " for the hardness of 
men's hearts." It cannot be denied that such passages 
of Scripture are liable to misunderstanding : the spirit 
of the Old Covenanters, although no longer appealing 
to the action of Samuel, " hewing Agag in pieces 
before the Lord in Gilgal," is not altogether extin- 
guished ; and a community of recent origin in Amer- 
ica found their doctrines of polygamy on the Old 
Testament. But the poor generally read the Bible 
unconsciously : they take the good, and catch the 
prevailing spirit, without stopping to reason whether 



462 ON THE INTEEPRETATION OF SCRIPTUEE. 

this or that practice is sanctioned by the custom or 
example of Scripture. The child is only struck by 
the impiety of the children who mocked the prophet : 
he does not think of the severity of the punishment 
which is inflicted on them. And the poor, in this 
respect, are much like children : their reflection on 
the morality or immorality of characters or events is 
suppressed by reverence for Scripture. The Chris- 
tian teacher has a sort of tact by which he guides 
them to perceive only the spirit of the gospel every- 
where : they read, in the Psalms, of David's sin and 
repentance ; of the never-failing goodness of God to 
him, and his never-failing trust in him ; not of his 
imprecations against his enemies. Such difficulties 
are greater in theory and on paper than in the man- 
agement of a school or parish. They are found to 
affect the half-educated, rather than either the poor, 
or those who are educated in a higher sense. To be 
above such difficulties is the happiest condition of 
human life and knowledge, or to be below them ; to 
see, or think we see, how they may be reconciled with 
divine power and wisdom, or not to see how they are 
apparently at variance with them. 

§6. _ 

Some application of the preceding subject may be 
further made to theology and life. 

Let us introduce this concluding inquiry with two 
remarks : — 

I. It may be observed, that a change in some of the 
prevailing modes of interpretation is not so much a 
matter of expediency as of necessity. The original 
meaning of Scripture is beginning to be clearly under- 
stood ; but the apprehension of the original meaning 
is inconsistent with the reception of a typical or con- 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 463 

veiitional one. The time will come when educated 
men will be no more able to believe that the words, 
" Out of Egypt have I called my son" (Matt. ii. 15 ; 
Hos. xi. 1), were intended by the prophet to refer 
to the return of Joseph and Mary from Egypt, than 
they are now able to believe the Roman Catholic ex- 
planation of Gen. iii. 15, " Ipsa conteret caput tuum." 
They will no more think that the first chapters of 
Genesis relate the same tale which geology and eth- 
nology unfold, than they now think the meaning «kf 
Josh. X. 12, 13, to be in accordance with Galileo's 
discovery. 

From the circumstance, that in former ages there 
has been a fourfold or a sevenfold interpretation of 
Scripture, we cannot argue to the possibility of up- 
holding any other than the original one in our own. 
The mystical explanation^ of Origen or Philo were 
not seen to be mystical ; the reasonings of Aquinas 
and Calvin were not supposed to go beyond the letter 
of the text. They have now become the subject of 
apology : it is justly said, that we should not judge 
the greatness of the Fathers or Reformers by their 
suitableness to our own day. But this defence of 
them shows that their explanations of Scripture are 
no longer tenable : they belong to a way of thinking 
and speaking which was once diffused over the world, 
but has now passed away. And what we give up as 
a general principle, we shall find it impossible to 
maintain partially, — e. g. in the types of the Mosaic 
law and the double meanings of prophecy ; at least, in 
any sense in which it is not equally applicable to all 
deep and suggestive writings. 

The same observation may be applied to the histor- 
ical criticism of Scripture. From the fact that Paley 



464 ON THE INTERPEETATION OF SCRIPTUHE. 

or Butler were regarded in their generation as sup- 
plying a triumphant answer to the enemies of Scrip- 
ture, we cannot argue that their answer will be satis- 
factory to those who inquire into such subjects in our 
own. Criticism has far more power than it formerly 
had : it has spread itself over ancient, and even mod- 
ern history ; it extends to the thoughts and ideas of 
men as well as to words and facts ; it has also a great 
place in education. Whether the habit of mind which 
1ms been formed in classical studies will not go on to 
Scripture ; whether Scripture can be made an excep- 
tion to other ancient writings, now that the nature of 
both is more understood ; whether, in the fuller light 
of history and science, the views of the last century 
will hold out, — these are questions respecting which 
the course of religious opinion in the past does not 
afford the means of truly judging. 

II. It has to be considered whether the intellectual 
forms under which Christianity has been described 
may not also be in a state of transition and resolution ; 
in this respect contrasting with the never-changing 
truth of the Christian life. (1 Cor. xiii. 8.) Looking 
backwards at past ages, we experience a kind of 
amazement at the minuteness of theological distinc- 
tions, and also at their permanence. Tlicy seem to 
have borne a part in the education of the Christian 
world, in an age when language itself had also a 
greater influence than now-a-days. It is admitted 
that these distinctions are not observed in the New 
Testament ; and are, for the most part, of a later 
growth. But little is gained by setting up theology 
against Scripture, or Scripture against theology ; the 
Bible against the Church, or the Church against 
the Bible. At different periods, either has been a 



ON THE IXTERrRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 465 

bulwark against some form of error ; either has tended 
to correct the abuse of the other. A true inspiration 
guarded the writers of the New Testament from Gnos- 
tic or Manichean tenets : at a later stage, a sound 
instinct prevented the Church from dividing the hu- 
manity and divinity of Christ. It may be said that 
the spirit of Christ forbids us to determine beyond 
what is written ; and the decision of the Council of 
Nicsea has been described by an eminent English prel- 
ate as ^' the greatest misfortune that ever befell the 
Christian world." Tliat is, perhaps, true ; yet a dif- 
ferent decision would have been a greater misfortime. 
Nor does there seem any reason to suppose that the 
human mind could have been arrested in its theologi- 
cal course. It is a mistake to imagine that the divid- 
ing and splitting of words is owing to the depravity 
of the human heart : was it not rather an intellectual 
movement (the only phenomenon of progress then go- 
ing on among men), which led, by a sort of necessity, 
some to go forward to the completion of the system, 
while it left others to stand aside ? A veil was on the 
human understanding in the great controversies which 
absorbed the Church in earlier ages : the cloud which 
the combatants themselves raised intercepted the view. 
They did not see, they could not have imagined, that 
there was a world which lay beyond the range of the 
controversy. 

And now, as the interpretation of Scripture is re- 
ceiving another character, it seems that distinctions 
of theology, which were, in great measure, based on 
old interpretations, are beginning to fade away. A 
change is observable in the manner in which doctrines 
are stated and defended : it is no longer held sufficient 
to rest them on texts of Scripture, one, two, or more, 
20* DD 



466 ON THE miERPEETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

which contain, or appear to contain, similar words or 
ideas. They are connected more closely with our 
moral nature : extreme consequences are shunned ; 
large allowances are made for the ignorance of man- 
kind. It is held that there is truth on both sides ; 
about many questions there is a kind of union of oppo- 
sites ; others are admitted to have been verbal only ; 
all are regarded in the light which is thrown upon 
them by church history and religious experience. A 
theory has lately been put forward, apparently as a 
defence of the Christian faith, which denies the objec- 
tive character of any of them. And there are other 
signs that times are changing, and we arc changing 
too. It would be scarcely possible, at present, to re- 
vive the interest which was felt less than twenty years 
ago in the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration ; nor 
would the arguments by which it was supported or un- 
pugned have the meaning which they once had. The 
communion of the Lord's Supper is also ceasing, at 
least in the Church of England, to be a focus or cen- 
tre of disunion, — 

" Our greatest love turned to our greatest hate." 

A silence is observable on some other points of doc- 
trine around which controversies swarmed a genera- 
tion ago. Persons begin to ask what was the real 
difference which divided the two parties. They are 
no longer within the magic circle, but are taking up 
a position external to it. They have arrived at an 
age of reflection, and begin to speculate on the action 
and reaction, the irritation and counter-irritation of 
religious forces. It is a common observation, that 
" revivals are not permanent : " the movement is crit- 
icised even by those who are subject to its influence. 



ON THE INTERPKETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 467 

111 the present state of the human mind, any consid- 
eration of these subjects, whether from the highest or 
lowest or most moderate point of view, is unfavorable 
to the stability of dogmatical systems, because it rouses 
inquiry into the meanmg of words. To the sense of 
this is probably to be attributed the reserve on matters 
of doctrine and controversy which characterizes the 
present day, compared with the theological activity of 
twenty years ago. 

These reflections bring us back to the question with 
which we began : " What effect will the critical inter- 
pretation of Scripture have on theology and on life ? " 
Their tendency is to show that the result is beyond 
our control, and that the world is not unprepared for 
it. More things than at first sight appear are moving 
towards the same end. Religion often bids us think of 
ourselves, especially in later life, as each one in his 
appointed place, carrying on a work which is fashioned 
within by unseen hands. The theologian, too, may 
have peace in the thought, that he is subject to the 
conditions of his age, rather than one of its moving 
powers. When he hears theological inquiry censured 
as tending to create doubt and confusion, he knows 
very well that the cause of this is not to be sought in 
the writings of so-called rationalists or critics who are 
disliked partly because they unveil the age to itself, 
but in the opposition of reason and feeling, of the past 
and the present, in the conflict between the Calvin- 
istic tendencies of an elder generation, and the in- 
fluences which even in the same family naturally afiect 
the young. 

This distraction of the human mind between ad- 
verse influences and associations is a fact which we 
should have to accept, and make the best of, whatever 



468 ox THE IXTEKrilETATIOX OF SOKirTUKE. 

ooTisoquonces might soom to follow to individuals or 
oluiivhos. It is not to bo rogardod as a nioroly Hea- 
thou notion, that ** truth is to bo desired lor its own 
sake, even though no ** good " result tVom it." As a 
Christian paradox, it may be said. '• What hast thou 
to do with 'good'? follow thou Me." Ihit the Chris- 
tian revelation does not require of us this Stoieism in 
most eases : it rather shows how good and truth ai*o 
generally ooineident. Even in this life, tliere ai*e 
numberless links whieh unite moriil good with intel- 
leetual truth. It is hardly too mueh to say, that tho 
one is but a narrower form of the other. Truth is to 
the world what holiness of life is to the individual, — 
to man eoUeetively, the souree of justiee and peace 
ami good. 

There are many ways in whieh the eonneetion be- 
tween truth and good may be traeed in the inter- 
pretation of Seri{)ture. Is it a mere chimera, that 
the ditVerent sections of Christendom may meet on 
the common ground of the New Testament ? or that 
the individual may be urged, by the vacancy and un- 
profitableness of old traditions, to make the gospel his 
own, — a life of Christ in the soul, instead of a the- 
ory of Christ which is in a Ix^ok, or written down ? 
or that, in missions to the Heathen, Scriptui*e may 
become the expression of univei*sal truths, rather than 
of the tenets of particular men or chuivhes ? That 
would remove many obstacles to tho reception of 
Christianity. ('>r that the study of Scripture may 
have a more important place in a liberal education 
than hitherto': or that the "rational service" of inter- 
pivting Scripture may dry up the crude and dreamy 
vapors of religious excitement ? or that, in preach- 
ing, new souives of spiritual health may tlow from a 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 469 

more natural use of Scripture ? or that the lessons 
of Scripture may- have a nearer way to the hearts 
of the poor, when disengaged from theological for- 
mulas ? Let us consider more at length some of these 
topics. 

I. No one, casting his eye over the map of the 
Christian world, can desire that the present lines of 
demarcation should always remain, any more than he 
will be inclined to regard the division of Christians 
to which he belongs himself, as, in a pre-eminent or 
exclusive sense, the Church of Christ. Those lines of 
demarcation seem to be political rather than religious : 
they are ditferences of nations or goYernmeuts, or 
ranks of society, more than of creeds, or forms of fiiith. 
The feeling which gave rise to them has, in a great 
measure, passed away : no intelligent man seriously 
inclines to believe that salvation is to be found only in 
his own denomination. Examples of this " sturdy 
orthodoxy," in our own generation, rather provoke a 
smile than arouse serious disapproval. Yet many 
experiments show that these differences cannot bo 
made up by any formal concordat, or scheme of union : 
the parties cannot be brought to terms ; and, if they 
could, would cease to take an interest in the question 
at issue. The friction is too great, when persons are 
invited to meet for a discussion of differences : such 
a process is like opening the doors and windows to 
put out a slumbering flame. But that is no reason 
for doubting that the divisions of the Christian world 
are beginning to pass away. The progress of poHtics, 
acquaintance with other countries, the growth of 
knowledge and of material greatness, changes of opin- 
ion in the Church of England, the present position of 
the Roman communion, — all these phenomena show 



470 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

that tlie ecclesiastical state of the world is not destined 
to be perpetual. Within the envious barriers which 
" divide human nature into very little pieces " (Plato, 
" Rep." iii. 395), a common sentiment is springing 
up, of religious truth ; the essentials of Christianity 
are contrasted with the details and definitions of it ; 
good men of all religions find that they are more 
nearly agreed than heretofore. Neither is it impossi- 
ble tliat this common feeling may so prevail over the 
accidental circumstances of Christian communities, 
that their political or ecclesiastical separation may be 
little felt. The walls which no adversary has scaled 
may fall down of themselves. We may perhaps figure 
to ourselves the battle against error and moral evil 
taking the place of one of sects and parties. 

In this movement, which we should see more clearly 
but for the divisions of the Christian world which 
partly conceal it, the critical interpretation of Scrip- 
ture will have a great influence. The Bible will be 
no longer appealed to as the witness of the opinions of 
particular sects, or of our own age : it will cease to 
be the battle-field of controversies. But, as its true 
meaning is more clearly seen, its moral power will 
also be greater. If the outward and inward witness, 
instead of parting into two, as they once did, seem 
rather to blend and coincide in the Christian con- 
sciousness, that is not a source of weakness, but of 
strength. The Book itself, which links together the 
beginning and end of the human race, will not have 
a less inestimable value because the Spirit has taken 
the place of the letter. Its discrepancies of fact, 
when we become familiar with them, will seem of 
little consequence in comparison with the truths which 
it unfolds. That these truths, instead of floating 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 471 

down the stream of tradition or being lost in ritual 
observances, have been preserved forever in a book, 
is one of the many blessings which the Jewish and 
Christian revelations have conferred on the world, — 
a blessing not the less real because it is not necessary 
to attribute it to miraculous causes. 

Again: the Scriptures are a bond of union to the 
whole Christian world. No one denies their authority ; 
and, could all be brought to an intelligence of their 
true meaning, all might come to agree in matters of 
religion. That may seem to be a hope deferred, yet 
not altogether chimerical. If it is not held to be a 
thing impossible that there should be agreement in 
the meaning of Plato or Sophocles, neither is it to be 
regarded as absurd that there should be a like agree- 
ment in the interpretation of Scripture. The disap- 
pearance of artificial notions and systems will pave 
the way to such an agreement. The recognition of 
the fact, that many aspects and stages of religion are 
found in Scripture ; that different, or even opposite, 
parties existed in the Apostolic Church ; that the first 
teachers of Christianity had a separate and individual 
mode of regarding the gospel of Christ ; that any 
existing communion is necessarily much more unlike 
the brotherhood of love in the New Testament than 
we are wilhng to suppose, — Protestants in some re- 
spects, as much so as Catholics ; that rival sects in 
our own day — Calvinists and Armmians — those who 
maintain and those who deny the final restoration of 
man — may equally find texts which seem to favor 
their respective tenets (Mark ix. 44-48 ; Rom. xi. 32), 
— the recognition of these and similar facts will make 
us unwilling to impose any narrow rule of religious 



472 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

opinion on the ever-varying conditions of the human 
mind and Christian society. 

II. Christian missions suggest another sphere in 
which a more enUghtened use of Scripture might 
offer a great advantage to the teacher. The more 
he is himself penetrated with the universal spirit of 
Scripture, the more he will be able to resist the literal 
and servile habits of mind of Oriental nations. You 
cannot transfer English ways of belief, and almost 
the history of the Church of England itself, as the 
attempt is sometimes made, not to an uncivilized 
people, ready like children to receive new impressions, 
but to an ancient and decaying one, furrowed with 
the lines of thought, incapable of the principle of 
growth ; but you may take the purer light or ele- 
ment of religion, of which Christianity is the expres- 
sion, and make it shine on some principle in human 
nature which is the fallen image of it. You cannot 
give a people, who have no history of their own, a 
sense of the importance of Christianity, as an histor- 
ical fact ; but perhaps that very peculiarity of their 
character may make them more impressible by the 
truths or ideas of Christianity. Neither is it easy to 
make them understand the growth of revelation in 
successive ages, — that there are precepts of the Old 
Testament which are reversed in the New, or that 
Moses allowed many things for the hardness of men's 
hearts. They are in one state of the world, and the 
missionary who teaches them is in another ; and 
the Book through which they are taught docs not 
altogether coincide with either. Many difficulties 
thus arise which we are most likely to be successful 
in meeting, when we look them in the face. To one 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRirTURE. 473 

inference they clearly point, which is this, — that it is 
not the Book of Scripture which we should seek to 
give them, to be reverenced like the Vedas or the 
Koran, and consecrated in its words and letters ; but 
the truth of the Book, the mind of Christ and his 
apostles, in which all lesser details and differences 
should be lost and absorbed. We want to awaken in 
them the sense that God is their Father, and they his 
children : that is of more importance than any theory 
about the inspiration of Scripture. But, to teach in 
this spirit, the missionary should himself be able to 
separate the accidents from the essence of religion : 
he should be conscious that the power of the gospel 
resides, not in the particulars of theology, but in the 
Christian life. 

in. It may be doubted whether Scripture has ever 
been sufficiently regarded as an element of liberal 
education. Few deem it worth while to spend in the 
study of it the same honest thought or pains which 
are bestowed on a classical author. Nor, as at pres- 
ent studied, can it be said always to have an elevating 
effect. It is not a useful lesson for the young student 
to apply, to Scripture, principles which he would hesi- 
tate to apply to other books ; to make formal recon- 
cilements of discrepancies which he would not think 
of reconciling in ordinary history ; to divide simple 
words into double meanings ; to adopt the fancies 
or conjectures of Fathers and commentators as real 
knowledge. This laxity of knowledge is apt to infect 
the judgment when transferred to other subjects. It 
is not easy to say how much of the unsettlement of 
mind which prevails among intellectual young men is 
attributable to these causes : the mixture of truth and 
falsehood in religious education certainly tends to 



474 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

impair, at the age when it is most needed, the early 
influence of a religious home. 

Yet Scripture, studied in a more liberal spirit, 
might supply a part of education which classical liter- 
ature fails to provide. " The best book for the heart 
might also be made the best book for the intellect." 
The noblest study of history and antiquity is con- 
tained in it ; a poetry which is also the highest form 
of moral teaching : there, too, are lives of heroes and 
prophets, and especially of One whom we do not name 
with them, because he is above them. This history 
or poetry or biography is distinguished from all clas- 
sical or secular writings by the contemplation of man 
as he appears in the sight of God. That is a sense of 
things into which we must grow as well as reason 
ourselves ; without which human nature is but a trun- 
cated, half-educated sort of being. But this sense or 
consciousness of a divine presence in the world, which 
seems to be natural to the beginnings of the human 
race, but fades away and requires to be renewed in 
its after-history, is not to be gathered from Greek or 
Roman literature, but from tlie Old and New Testa- 
ment ; and, before we can make the Old and New 
Testament a real part of education, we must read 
them, not by the help of custom or tradition, in the 
spirit of apology or controversy, but in accordance 
with the ordinary laws of human knowledge. 

lY. Another use of Scripture is that in sermons, 
which seems to be among the tritest, and yet is far 
from being exhausted. If we could only be natural, 
and speak of things as they truly are with a real 
interest, and not merely a conventional one ! The 
words of Scripture come readily to hand, and the 
repetition of them requires no effort of thought in 



ON THE INTEEPKETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 475 

the writer or speaker ; but neither does it produce 
any effect on the hearer, which will always be in pro- 
portion to the degree of feeling or consciousness in 
ourselves. It may be said that originality is the gift 
of few : no church can expect to have, not a hun- 
dred, but ten, such preachers as Robertson or New- 
man. But, without originality, it seems possible to 
make use of Scripture in sermons in a much more liv- 
ing way than at present. Let the preacher make it a 
sort of religion, and proof of his reverence for Scrip- 
ture, that he never uses its words without a distinct 
meaning : let him avoid the form of argument from 
Scripture, and catch the feeling and spirit. Scripture 
is itself a kind of poetry, when not overlaid with rhet- 
oric. The scene and country has a freshness which 
may always be renewed : there is the interest of antiq- 
uity, and the interest of home or common life as well. 
The facts and characters of Scripture might receive a 
new reading by being described simply as they are. 
The truths of Scripture, again, would have greater 
reality if divested of the scholastic form in which the- 
ology has cast them. The universal and spiritual as- 
pects of Scripture might be more brought forward, to 
the exclusion of questions of the Jewish law, or con- 
troversies about the sacraments, or exaggerated state- 
ments of doctrines which seem to be at variance with 
morality. The life of Christ, regarded quite naturally 
as of one " who was in all points tempted like as we 
are, yet without sin," is also the life and centre of 
Christian teaching. There is no higher aim which 
the preacher can propose to himself than to awaken 
what may be termed the feeling of the presence of 
God and the mind of Christ in Scripture : not to col- 
lect evidences about dates and books, or to familiarize 



476 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

metaphysical distinctions ; but to make the heart and 
conscience of his hearers bear him witness, that the 
lessons which are contained in Scripture — lessons of 
justice and truth, lessons of mercy and peace — of the 
need of man and the goodness of God to him are in- 
deed not human, but divine. 

V. It is time to make an end of this long disquisi- 
tion : let the end be a few more words of application 
to the circumstances of a particular class in the pres- 
ent age. If any one, who is about to become a cler- 
gyman, feels, or thinks that he feels, that some of the 
preceding statements cast a shade of trouble or sus- 
picion on his future walk of Hfe ; who, either from 
the influence of a stronger mind than his own, or 
from some natural tendency in himself, has been led 
to examine those great questions which lie on the 
threshold of the higher study of theology, and expe- 
riences a sort of shrinking or dizziness at the prospect 
which is opening upon him, — let him lay to heart the 
following considerations : First, that he may possibly 
not be the person who is called upon to pursue such 
inquiries. No man should busy himself with them 
who has not clearness of mind enough to see things 
as they are, and a faith strong enough to rest in that 
degree of knowledge which God has really given ; or 
who is unable to separate the truth from his own relig- 
ious wants and experiences. For the theologian, as 
well as the philosopher, lias need of " dry light," 
" unmingled with any tincture of the affections," the 
more so as his conclusions are oftener liable to be dis- 
ordered by them. He who is of another tempera- 
ment may find another work to do, which is in some 
respects a higher one. Unlike philosophy, the gospel 
has an ideal life to offer, not to a few only, but to all. 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 477 

There is one word of caution, however, to be given to 
those who renounce inquiry : it is, that they cannot 
retain tlie right to condemn inquirers. Their duty is 
to say, with Nicodemus, " Doth the gospel condemn 
any man before it hear him ? " although the answer 
may be only, " Art thou also of Galilee ? " They have 
chosen the path of practical usefulness, and they 
should acknowledge that it is a narrow path ; for 
any but a " strong swimmer " will be insensibly drawn 
out of it by the tide of public opinion or the current 
of party. 

Secondly, Let him consider that the difficulty is 
not so great as imagination sometimes paints it. It 
is a difficulty which arises chiefly out of differences 
of education in different classes of society. It is a 
difficulty which tact and prudence, and, much more, 
the power of a Christian life, may hope to surmount. 
Much depends on the manner in which things, are 
said ; on the evidence, in the writer or preacher, of a 
real good-will to his opponents, and a desire for the 
moral improvement of men. There is an aspect of 
truth which may always be put forward so as to find 
a way to the hearts of men. If there is danger and 
shrinking, from one point of view, — from another 
there is freedom, and sense of relief. The wider con- 
templation of the religious world may enable us to 
adjust our own place in it. The acknowledgment of 
churches as political and national institutions is the 
basis of a sound government of them. Criticism itself 
is not only negative : if it creates some difficulties, it 
does away others. It may put us at variance with a 
party or section of Christians in our own neighbor- 
hood ; but, on the other hand, it enables us to look at 
all men as they are in the sight of God, not as they 



4T8 ON THE INTEEPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

appear to human eye, separated and often interdicted 
from each other by lines of religious demarcation : it 
divides us from the parts to unite us to the whole. 
That is a great help to religious communion. It does 
away with t\\Q supposed opposition of reason and faith. 
It throws us back on the conviction, that religion is a 
personal thing, in which certainty is to be slowly won 
and not assumed as the result of evidence or testimony. 
It places us, in some respects (though it be deemed 
a paradox to say so), more nearly in the position of 
the first Christians, to whom the New Testament was 
not yet given ; in whom the gospel was a living word, 
not yet embodied in forms, or supported by ancient 
institutions. 

Thirdly, The suspicion or difficulty which attends 
critical inquiries is no reason for doubting their value. 
The Scripture nowhere leads us to suppose that the 
circumstance of all men speaking well of us is any 
ground for supposing that we are acceptable in the 
sight of God ; and there is no reason why the con- 
demnation of others should be witnessed to by our 
own conscience. Perhaps it may true, that, owing 
to the jealousy or fear of some, the reticence of others, 
the terrorism of a few, we may not always find it 
easy to regard these subjects with calmness and judg- 
ment. But, on the other hand, these accidental cir- 
cumstances have nothing to do with the question at 
issue : they cannot have the slightest influence on 
the meaning of words, or on the truth of facts. No 
one can carry out the principle, that public opinion or 
church authority is the guide to truth, when he goes 
beyond the limits of his own church or country : that 
is a consideration which may well make him pause 
before he accepts of such a guide in the journey to 



ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 479 

anotlier world. All the arguments for repressing 
inquiries into Scripture, in Protestant countries, hold 
equally in Italy and Spain for repressing inquiries 
into matters of fact or doctrine, and so for denying 
the Scriptures to the common people. 

Lastly, Let him be assured that there is some 
nobler idea of truth than is supplied by the opinion 
of mankind in general, or the voice of parties in a 
church. Every one, whether a student of theology or 
not, has need to make war against his prejudices, no 
less than against his passions ; and, in the religious 
teacher, the first is even more necessary than the last. 
For, while the vices of mankind are in a great degree 
isolated, and are, at any rate, reprobated by public 
opinion, their prejudices have a sort of communion or 
kindred with the world without. They are a collective 
evil, and have their being in the interest, classes, states 
of society, and other influences amid which we live. 
He who takes the prevailing opinions of Christians, 
and decks them out in their gayest colors ; who 
reflects the better mind of the world to itself, — is 
likely to be its favorite teacher. Li that ministry of 
the gospel, even when assuming forms repulsive to 
persons of education, no doubt the good is far greater 
than the error or harm. But there is also a deeper 
work, which is not dependent on the opinions of 
men in which many elements combine, some alien to 
religion, or accidentally at variance with it. That 
work can hardly expect to win much popular favor, 
so far as it runs counter to the feelings of religious 
parties ; but he who bears a part in it may feel a 
confidence, which no popular caresses or religious 
sympathy could inspire, that he has, by a divine help, 
been enabled to plant his foot somewhere beyond 



480 ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 

the waves of time. He may depart hence before the 
natural term, worn out with intellectual toil, regarded 
with suspicion by many of his contemporaries ; yet 
not witliout a sure hope, that the love of truth, 
which men of saintly lives often seem to slight, is, 
nevertheless, accepted before God. 



APPENDIX. 



21 



EE 



APPENDIX 



No. I 

Note to Page 388. 

ON THE "PHALARIS CONTROVERSY." 

The controversy here referred to was a learned dispute 
between Charles Boyle, afterward Earl of Orrery, and Richard 
Bentley, respecting the genuineness of the Epistles ascribed 
to Phalaris, the Agrigentine tyrant of brazen-bull memory, but 
proved to be a forgery of comparatively recent date. 

The controversy originated in the following manner. In 
the year 1 690, Sir William Temple published in his Miscel- 
lanea an " Essay upon Ancient and Modern Learning," in 
which he spoke in extravagant terms of the Epistles of Pha- 
laris, as exemphfying the vast superiority of ancient over 
modem learning. This eulogy from a writer of such high 
authority suggested to Dr. Aldrich, then Dean of Christ 
Church, Oxford, the republication of the work in question, 
an undertaking which he assigned to the Hon. Charles Boyle, 
a student of that College. In 1697, the Rev. WiUiam Wotton 
pubUshed a second edition of his " Reflections on Ancient and 
Modern Learning," to which Bentley, at his request, contrib- 
uted a " Dissertation " on the Epistles of Phalaris and other 
topics connected with "Wotton's pubhcation. This paper con- 
tained a severe attack on the Epistles, and on Boyle's edition, 
and was thought by the scholars of Christ Church to reflect 
injuriously on the credit of that College. A bitter reply was 



484 APPENDIX. 

published during the following year, entitled, " Dr. Bentley's 
Dissertations on the Epistles of Pbalaris and the Fables of 
w^sop, examined by the Honorable Charles Boyle, Esq." 
Though bearing the name of Boyle, the work is supposed to 
have been the production of Francis Atterbur}', his tutor, as- 
sisted by various contributors. This superficial but ingenious 
and amusing essay obtained great popularity, and passed at 
once to a second edition. It was deemed a complete success, 
and figures in Swift's " Battle of the Books " as a signal vic- 
tory achieved by a gifted youth, with the aid of Apollo, over a 
rude and contemptuous adversary. Bentley was undisturbed, 
and uttered on this occasion the memorable saying, that " No 
man was ever written down by anybody but himself" In 
1699, he published his "Dissertation upon the Epistles of 
Phalaris: with an Answer to the Objections of the Hon. 
Charles Boyle, Esq.," — which set the matter forever at rest. 
The spuriousness of the Epistles, the ignorance and impudence 
of the author of Boyle's Examination, were triumphantly ex- 
posed. An answer was threatened, but none was attempted, 
and none was possible. 

See Dyce's Preface to Bentley's Works, Monk's Life of 
Bentley, and Macaulay's Life of Francis Atterbury (the lat- 
ter in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Am. ed.). 



APPENDIX. 485 



No. 11. 

THE PRESENT RELATIONS OF SCIENCE 
TO RELIGION.* 

BVr THE 

EEV. FREDEEICK TEMPLE, D.D., 

HEAD-MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL,. 

EccuEsiASTES i. 17 : "I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness aaid 
folly : I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit." 

The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes tells us that he made 
it his business to inquire into all that went out upon the earth, 
in the hope that he might find " what was that good for the 
sons of men which they should do under the heaven all the 
days of their life." His inquiry led him, in every instance, to 
the same conclusion, that all was vanity. The word " vanity " 
here, however, plainly does not mean an absolute, but only a 
relative, condemnation. The preacher does not mean to say 
that human pursuits contain absolutely nothing in them that 
is good, nor does he wish to exhort his hearers to quit alto- 
gether what he has condemned. On the contrary, the book 
abounds with the fullest acknowledgments of the excellence 
of each human occupation and enjoyment in its turn. There 
is much in the praise of pleasure : " There is notliing better 
for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he 
should make his soul enjoy good in his labor." There is 
much in praise of labor : " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to 
do, do it with thy might." There is much in praise of wis- 
dom: "Wisdom is better than strength;" "Wisdom is as 
good as an inheritance;" "Wisdom is profitable to direct." 
There is much in praise of upright conduct : " God giveth to 
a man that is good in his sight wisdom and knowledge and 



* A Sermon preached on Act Sunday, July 1, 1860, before the University 

of Oxford, duruio; the Meeting of the British Association. 



486 APPENDIX. 

joy, but to the sinner lie giveth travail." There is much in 
praise of the happy heart of youth : " Let thy heart cheer thee 
in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart 
and in the sight of thine eyes." And all these praises, and 
the exhortations that go along with them to enjoy the good 
that God hath given, are not ironical, but seriously meant. 
But, notwithstanding, one after another, all human pursuits, 
all human gifts, all human enjoyments, are branded with the 
same mark of deficiency ; all, even the most excellent, are 
still vanity and vexation of spirit. Not wisdom only, and 
labor, and youth, and pleasure, but even the upright walk 
and the keeping of the ordinances of rehgion, even they too 
are in the same sense vanity. " There is one event to the 
righteous and to the wicked, to the clean and to the unclean, 
to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not ; as is 
the good so is the sinner, and he that sweareth as he that 
feareth an oath." 

It is plain that the sense in which all these things are 
vanity is, that they cannot satisfy. They are all, without 
exception, shadows and not substance. They all, without 
exception, promise what they cannot perform. Each in its 
turn promises to fill the whole man and give him all that he 
wants. There are excellent enjoyments which, some for a 
shorter, some for a longer time, seem to be all that the soul 
desires. There are occupations and labors which aim at so 
worthy an end, and are rewarded by so noble an appreciation, 
that for a time the soul believes them equal to all its needs. 
The fire of youthful happiness burns so brightly, and so 
warmly, and so purely, that we are tempted to declare it the 
one best gift of God. There is a path of life so honored by 
men, so approved by conscience, namely, the path of duty, 
that in it surely might well seem to be comprised all that 
man can possibly require. And yet each one of these will 
be found wanting : good as far as it goes, but not the whole ; 
promising to satisfy, and never fulfilling its promise ; in fact, 
only then fulfilling its function when it proclaims its own 
vanity, and bids the seeker seek further still. The very ex- 



APPENDIX. 487 

cellence of the most excellent of all these will the more 
emphatically condemn it, for that excellence is the false hght 
which allures men to beheve in its perfection, and to fancy- 
that all that is wanted shall here be found. 

So we are led to the conclusion of the whole matter. 
" Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the 
whole of man." Not in pleasure, however pure and however 
heavenly ; not in wisdom, however searching; not in labor, how- 
ever successful ; not in worldly duty, however self-denying ; 
but in God shall we find the true substance of all that is done 
under the sun, the reality of which all else is the image, the 
brightness of which all else is the reflection. 

This conclusion has been in the minds of the vast majority 
of thinkers ever since. It is possible to forget God altogether 
in the whirl of pleasure, in the absorbing interests of business 
or of ambition. But the student cannot well forget the ques- 
tion which underlies all other questions : " What is it that gives 
any unity or consistency to all these studies ? What is the 
relation between our knowledge and the source of all knowl- 
edge ? What can human science tell me of divine nature ? " 
And those who have been more than students, who have been 
Christians in heart as well as searchers after truth, have 
sought for an answer to this question, not as the solution of 
an intellectual puzzle, but as the true end of all their studies. 
The desire to find God in all his works is certainly not rare, 
the desire to clear up the relation between faith and science 
is almost universal in those who devote themselves to scientific 
investigation. Hence no sooner is any physical theory or 
hypothesis proposed which in the remotest way can affect the 
belief of Christians, than its bearings on every article of the 
Christian faith, and even on every detail of the commonly 
received religious opinions, are discussed at the fullest length, 
and not unfrequently with an eager anxiety to identify faith 
and science which overshoots the mark, by attempting to de- 
cide before there is evidence enough for a decision. 

On the present occasion it seems to be not unfitting to 
examine some of the leading relations between religion and 



488 APPENDIX. 

science, especially with a view to point out some of the 
changes which the progress of science is producing in them. 

Science has been called the handmaid of theology, and 
theology has often had recourse to science for arguments to 
prove or confirm her fundamental propositions. But it is re- 
markable that theology has almost always for this purpose 
dwelt chiefly, not on the scientific, but on the unscientific 
statements of science. Arguments have been commonly ex- 
tracted, not from the revelations of science, but from her con- 
fessions ; and theology has begun where science has ended. 
It has been common to trace the power of God, not in that 
which is universal, but in that which is individual ; not in the 
laws of nature, but in any apparent interference with those 
laws ; not in the maintenance, but in the creation, of the uni- 
verse. And sometimes such stress has been laid upon these 
arguments, that to deny them was held to be a denial of their 
conclusions ; and men were thought impious who attempted 
to represent the present order of the solar system or the ex- 
istence of animal life as the work of natural causes, and not 
the direct handiwork of God himself. And yet spontaneous 
generation was long believed in by the most religious men, 
and there seems no more reason why the solar system should 
not have been brought into its present form by the slow work- 
ing of natural causes than the surface of the earth, about 
whose gradual formation most students are now agreed. The 
fact is, that one idea is now emerging into supremacy in 
science, a supremacy which it never possessed before, and for 
which it still has to fight a battle ; and that is the idea of 
law. Different orders of natural phenomena have in time 
past been held to be exempt from that idea, either tacitly or 
avowedly. The weather, the thunder and lightning, the 
crops of the earth, the progress of disease, whether over a 
country or in an individual, these have been considered as 
regulated by some special interference, even when it was 
already known that the recurrence of the seasons, the motions 
of the planets, the periodic winds, and other phenomena of 
the same kind, were subject to invariable laws. But the 



APPENDIX. 489 

Steady march of science has now reached the point when men 
ai'e tempted, or rather compelled, to jump at once to a uni- 
versal conclusion : all analogy points one way, and none an- 
other. And the student of science is learning to look upon 
fixed laws as universal, and many of the old arguments 
which science once suppHed to religion are in consequence 
rapidly disappearing. How strikingly altered is our view 
from that of a few centuries ago is shown by the fact that 
the miracles recorded in the Bible, which once were looked 
on as the bulwarks of the faith, are now felt by very many 
to be difficulties in their way; and commentators endeavor 
to represent them, not as mere interferences with the laws of 
nature, but as the natural action of still higher laws belong- 
ing to a world whose phenomena are only half revealed to us. 

It is evident that this change in science necessitates a 
change in its relation to faith. K law be either almost or 
altogether universal, we must look for the finger of God in 
that law : we must expect to find him manifesting his love, 
his wisdom, his infinity, not in individual acts of will, but 
in a perfection of legislation rendering all individual action 
needless ; we must find his providence in that perfect adapta- 
tion of all the parts of the machine to one another which shall 
have the effect of tender care, though it proceed by an inva- 
riable action. The vast consequences which flow from a few 
simple properties of matter, the profusion of combinations, the 
beauty, the order, the happiness which abound in the creation 
in consequence of these, such must be now the teachers of the 
man of science to make him feel that God is with him in all 
his studies. 

It may be, indeed, that the scientific student is every day less 
and less driven to confession of the narrowness of his knowl- 
edge : he has less occasion for the humihty which once allowed 
vast realms of nature to he out of the domain of science, and 
was wont to say, when baffled, " Here human powers can go no 
further ; this knowledge God has reserved for himself." On 
the contrary, he is now inclined to think that, if only time 
21* 



490 APPENDIX. 

enough be given, there seems to be no kind of phenomenon 
imder the sun which patient study will not bring within the 
range of science. But this only amounts to saying that he 
must learn humility in another way. God will not stop hu- 
man science in order to teach man humility. He will not 
have man ignorant in order to be humble. He will have h'm 
study and learn, and be humble notwithstanding. And 
already we can see that, as the bar is removed which once 
seemed to stop man's progress in knowledge, so all the clearer 
is the bar made manifest which limits his powers of action. 
You have studied the laws of God's creation ; can you alter 
one of them in the very slightest degree ? You have weighed 
the matter of the earth ; can you create or can you (as would 
have been thought not long ago) annihilate one grain of its 
dust ? The creation of matter and the creation of the laws 
of matter is absolutely beyond all your power and all your 
wisdom ; and the longer you study and the wider appears to 
your eye the possible range of your science, the more clear 
and certain is this conclusion. There we find the hand of 
God ; there we shall never find the hand of man. 

The natural objection to find God in laws rather than in 
acts is that it tends to a kind of pantheism which robs us of 
our belief in God's personality. There is not perhaps much, 
though there is some, tendency to that gross material panthe- 
ism which identifies the universe with God, and, making all 
created matter to be as it were his body, destroys our con- 
ception of his nature. But there is a considerable tendency 
to the subtler pantheism, which forgets him in the idea of a 
universal law or system of laws, with a rigid mechanical ac- 
tion; without tenderness, without consciousness, without any 
answer to affection. It is clear, however, that this tendency 
to pantheism is not in the conception of law, but in our own 
minds ; and the proper corrective is to lift our minds up to 
the level which science demands of us. For we form our 
idea of God, and indeed we must do so, by analogy from our- 
selves. In the infancy of knowledge the spiritual faculty in 



APPENDIX. 491 

man appears to be liis will. The ideal of manhood is that of 
a will working at every moment by pure and high instincts, 
by the instincts of love, and tenderness, and unselfish generos- 
ity, and noble self-respect. But as knowledge grows, even in 
the short course of our own life, the reason and not the will, 
the principles and not the instincts, become the supreme char- 
acteristic of man, and that which most distinguishes him from 
all lower creatures. Then the ideal of manhood is that of a 
will subordinate to an enlightened reason or conscience, acting 
by laws the ground of which is understood, with a fore- 
thought of consequences, with a deliberateness of purpose, 
not swayed hither and thither by even the highest impulses, 
but joining to the tenderest feelings the power of harmon- 
izing them with a consistent, unvarying rule of action. So, 
too, we may think of God as love, but as love already ac- 
quainted with all that will happen or that can happen, and 
therefore able to harmonize that love with a fixed system of 
laws, and not driven, as human love is often driven, to shift 
its com^se by the occurrence or the discovery of circumstan- 
ces previously unknown. "We can think of his tenderness 
as shown, not in stopping the machinery of the world to 
adapt our circumstances to our short-sighted wishes, but in 
supplying our souls with a spiritual power which will enable 
us to rise above all circumstances whatever. 

This, however, is not all that we get from the idea of law. 
The laws of conscience, quite as much as the laws of nature, 
are capable of being represented to our minds in their high- 
est form as absolutely fixed. Kot only are they capable of 
being so represented, but it is the shape which they naturally 
wear. "We naturally think, as soon as we conceive the idea 
of law at all, of the laws of morals as being in their supreme 
manifestation eternal and immutable. And while science de- 
mands our recognition of the universal dominion of physical 
laws, and treats all exceptions as so rare that we may safely 
disregard them in our estimate, so conscience perpetually pro- 
claims the existence and loftier dominion of her moral law, 
and requires us to believe, under pain of her displeasure, and 



492 APPENDIX. 

as we value the dignity of our own manhood, that all law3 
are subordinate to hers, and that, whatever appearances there 
may be to the contrary, holiness and goodness and justice are 
the final arbiters of all that is, or hath been, or shall be, in 
the universe. Thus, above and beyond all the physical laws 
that we know, rises another of a different kind, proclaiming a 
different authority, demanding a completer obedience. Long 
induction compels our unhesitating belief in the properties of 
matter, or, in other words, in the laws of nature. No one 
doubts that fire will burn, that ice will chill, that poison will 
destroy ; and the proof of the faith is given by the obedience 
rendered. Precisely the same unhesitating faith will con- 
science require for the moral law ; we are to believe with the 
same unhesitating certainty that justice and goodness and ho- 
liness rule the universe, and w^e are to act on that belief. 

And further, this moral law is not capable, like the physi- 
cal law, of being conceived as impersonal, but carries in it 
the conviction of its own personality. For a moral law dif- 
fers from a physical law in this, that a physical law is satis- 
fied by mere verification : it is enough for a physical law if 
the facts invariably accord with the predictions of the law. 
Not so with a moral law. It is not justice if by some mere 
external accident it so happens that I get my deserts ; a mur- 
derer is not really punished for a murder because he is acci- 
dentally hung by those Avho know nothing of his crime ; a 
servant would not consider himself to have received his 
wages because he found an equal amount by a lucky accident. 
The intention is essential to the morality ; it would not satisfy 
the demands of justice that by some accident it should turn 
out that justice was always done : it must not only be done, 
it must be intended. And if there is intention, there is will ; 
and if there is will, there is personality. And thu's the moral 
law, whose sovereign authority is incessantly proclaimed with- 
in us, becomes the embodiment of the God of holiness, and in 
obeying it we are worshipping Him. 

It is true that we rise to the belief in the universal domin- 
ion of the moral law by an act of faith, and not by demon- 



APPENDIX. 493 

stration , but the moral spring is not gres; . litis case than 
the intelleotaa] spring in the other. No . -^ui cuii pixy tiiat it 
is yet demonstrated in detail that all nature is subject to fixed 
laws ; in fact, many who are not themselves students of sci- 
ence, and are therefore only bound to accept the conclusions 
of science so far as they are demonstrated, will still maintain 
that the health of the body and the changes of the weather 
are under some special government, and not under absolutely 
fixed laws at all. Yet such is the power of the perpetually 
operating analogy of science, that no student of nature seri- 
ously doubts the universality, or, at any rate, the generality, 
of the principle. Exceptions may still be possible, for our 
ignorance is, after all, greater than our knowledge, but assur- 
edly they are so extremely rare that they need not be counted. 
And why do we thus leap to this conclusion ? Because with- 
out it all science becomes incomplete and unaccountable ; be- 
cause we have tried it over and over again, and it has never 
yet failed us; because it perpetually opens new paths of 
knowledge, and no other principle ever has. Now for pre- 
cisely the same reasons do we leap to the parallel conclusion 
in religion. We have not evidence enough to show that the 
moral law rules the world ; there is, indeed, much that obeys 
it, but there is also much that seems to disobey it ; but never 
for a moment does conscience relax her demand upon our 
assent: for without it all our morality becomes incomplete 
and unaccountable ; the belief in it has always promised to 
raise us in the scale of moral being, and, whenever we have 
tried it, it has never failed to do so ; it perpetually lifts us 
above ourselves to all we find noblest and purest and best, 
and no other principle ever did or will. 

Thus while the fixed laws of science can supply natural 
religion with numberless illustrations of the wisdom, the be- 
neficence, the order, the beauty that characterize the work- 
manship of God ; while they illustrate his infinity by the 
marvellous complexity of natural combinations, by the variety 
and order of his creatures, by the exquisite finish alike be- 
stowed on the very greatest and on the very least of his 



494 APPENDIX. 

workd, a? L /.ve voce absolutely nothing in his sight ; so, too, 
+hev supp'v the ixnalogy by which we car. r'\ abo\e them- 
selves to that still higher law in which we fi' ^ le wry pres- 
ence of the person of the Godhead. 

Similar to this relation between science and natural re- 
ligion is the relation between science and revelation. There 
was a time when the spheres of these two were distinct ; or, 
if there waa^ ever an appearance of collision, science was 
required to give place. That time ceased with Gahleo, and 
can never return. The student of science now feels himself 
bound by the interests of truth, and can admit no other 
obligation. And if he be a religious man, he believes that 
both books, the book of Nature and the book of Revelation, 
come alike from God, and that he has no more right to re- 
fuse to accept what he finds in the one than what he finds 
in the other. The two books are indeed on totally different 
subjects ; the one may be called a treatise on physics and 
mathematics ; the other, a treatise on theology and morals. 
But they are both by the same Author ; and the difference 
in their importance is derived from the difference in their 
matter, and not from any difference in their authority. 
Whenever, therefore, there is a collision between them, 
the dispute becomes simply a question of evidence. Here, 
you have in nature God's handiwork; there, you have in 
the Bible the message which he commissioned certain ser- 
vants of his to give you. They do not appear to agree. 
Now, on the one side, are you quite certain in your inter- 
pretation of his handiwork? on the other, are you quite 
certain that you are not mixing up with his message some 
extraneous matter which belongs not to the message, but 
to the messenger ? In the case of Galileo the question 
has been answered ; the astronomer was right, the theo- 
logians were wrong. The apparent statement that the sun 
went round the earth is now acknowledged to belong to 
the messenger, not to the message ; to the language, not 
to the substance. The present state of science indicates 
that there will be more answers in the same direction. 



APPENDIX. 495 

Geology, for instance, has already altered our conception 
of a great part of the book of Genesis. Researches into 
ancient records seem likely to affect the details of the his- 
tory of the early races of mankind. How each one of the 
many questions thus started will be ultimately answered 
it is impossible to say. The probabihty is that both the 
agreements and the discrepancies between science and the 
Biblical narrative will be very different from what we now 
suppose : but, at any rate, it is tolerably plain that the 
Bible is not to look to science for that confirmation of 
minute details which not very long ago was confidently 
expected, and in many cases apparently produced. 

Is there, then, no harmony between the Bible and sci- 
ence ? Are they, if not foes, yet so distinct as to have 
no point of meeting ? Not so. But this harmony is to 
be looked for in a different direction ; not in petty details 
of facts are we to find it, but in the deep identity of 
tone, character, and spirit which pervade both the books. 
"Where, for instance, in all literature is the wonderful pa- 
tience of God's operations more clearly exhibited than in 
the Bible ? Again and again are we, as it were, reminded 
that to him a thousand years are as one day, and one day 
as a thousand years. To him, an absolutely infinite being, 
what difference can there be between long and short ? 
why should he not spend ages as willingly as seconds? 
So he chooses out a people two thousand years before it 
is wanted, and drills it and disciplines it from the call of 
Abraham to the coming of our Lord; all, as it seems, to 
make a fit scene for that four years of our Lord's minis- 
try, and a fit instrument for conveying his message to the 
world. Is not this like the same Hand that lavishes in 
unmeasured profusion thousands of years to make a conti- 
nent, to stock it with mountains and rivers, with mines and 
stone-quarries, all, as it seems, to be a scene for the history 
of one of our passing nations ? Or again, look at the enor- 
mous waste that seems to meet us in the very conception of 
choosing a people at all. The Jews were God's chosen, but 



496 APPENDIX. 

what were all the rest ? Some few races, we can see, were 
trained up for similar, though inferior, purposes ; but how 
vast a number seem no more than a mere store of material 
useless for the present. And is there not a similar waste in 
the creation of nature, stores of fossils buried where they can 
be of no value, plants growing where none can enjoy them, 
seeds and eggs by millions that never come to life at all ? 
Or again, look at the marvellous adaptation to human feehng 
which marks every precept of the Bible, and compare it with 
the wonderful beauty and beneficence of nature. Or again, 
look at the awful sternness with which the Bible threatens all 
disobedience, and compar%,it with the merciless severity of 
the physical laws when they are disobeyed. Or again, look 
at the mystery of repentance, the restoration to favor so often 
accompanied by no remission of the penalty, and see if natui*e 
does not often repair a fault in such a way as to leave the 
punishment for life. Or again, look at the strange instances 
of curses turned to blessings, and men apparently raised in 
some sense to a higher state by having fallen, and compare it 
with those strange caprices, as we call them, by which nature 
sometimes changes mischief into downright improvement. 
Whatever may be the case as regards the details of the 
narrative, assuredly there can be no mistake regarding the 
spirit of the author. The more the Bible is studied, and the 
more nature is studied, the deeper will be found the harmony 
between them in character, the more assured the certainty 
that whoever inspired the one also made the other. And 
most assured will that certainty be in the mind of him who 
studies the Bible as it was meant to be studied, not as an 
interesting historical record, but as the guide of life, the reve- 
lation of spiritual truth, the awakener and the kindler of 
religious inspiration. 

But when we have reached this point, when we have made 
science help us into religion, have we indeed reached, accord- 
ing to the Preacher, the conclusion of the whole matter ? No, 
indeed. Religious speculations, though the highest of all 
speculations, are yet but speculations ; and if we rest in them 



APPENDIX. 497 

we shall certainly be compelled to pronounce them also vanity 
and vexation of spirit. When we fight the battle with beset- 
ting sins ; when we have to resist some terrible attack from 
sensuality, from ambition, from vanity, from pride ; in the 
great crises of our life, when we stand where several ways 
meet, and our better nature is at war with our lower, and we 
seem to say. What shall I do to inherit eternal life ? and a 
still small voice seems to answer, Sell what thou hast and give 
unto the poor, and come, follow Me ; on the bed of sickness 
and of death, when this world seems to fade out of sight ; in 
the day of sharp trouble, of anxiety, of wounded affection, of 
hopeless misery, — then we need something more than rehg- 
ious speculations, even of the loftiest kind ; then we are not 
contented to hear of the moral law or of the nature of God : 
we want God himself, and without the living God we feel 
that we cannot stand. Then it is that the student of science 
knows that the most unlettered peasant can penetrate to the 
true reality of all things as surely as the wisest philosopher ; 
then science is called vanity, and theology is forgotten ; then 
pain is God's scourge to chastise, and his judgments are 
warnings, and the cry of our hearts is the echo of the groan- 
ings of his spirit, and the Bible is a letter written in his own 
hand, and we are his children, and he is our Father. Then 
all else fails us, and we cannot be content except we are 
clasped to his bosom and feel the Shepherd's arms around us. 
If our science is incompatible with this ; if it stifles the voice 
of nature, and prevents us from knowing that God is our 
Father and that we are his children, and that all his anger 
even against our sins is still the anger of a Father who never 
ceases to love us ; if its mechanical accuracy chills our feelings 
and blunts the keen edge of our desire to be like him, to be 
with him., to belong to him, — then certainly is such science 
vanity, and worse than vanity ; if it is truth to others, it is a 
deadly lie to ourselves. But the reverent study of the works 
of God assuredly need not ever lead in this direction. Rather 
in such study, as men behold the marvellous balance whereby 

FP 



498 APPENDIX. 

our Father ever restores all things to their true rest, can they 
best learn, if they will, the quiet calmness, the trust in the 
Almighty's power and goodness, which best befits a Christian 
soul. The reverent study of His works can and will bring us 
nearer in temper to their Divine Author. For of Him, and 
through Him, and to Him are all things ; to whom be glory 
forever. Amen. 



THE END. 



Cambrid^ : Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 




PUBLICATIONS 



V/ALKER, WISE, & CO., 

245 WASHINGTON STKEET, BOSTON. 
18 6 1. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Books in Press . . . . . . .2 

Recent Publications 3 

New Juvenile Books 6 

Standard Theological and Devotional Books 8 
Sunday-School Manuals, Service and Tune 

Books 18 

Valuable Miscellaneous Books . . . 20 

Hymn-Books, Liturgies, &c 21 

LATEST PUBLICATIONS .... 23 



BOOKS IN PRESS 



WILL BE READY SOON, 

HYMNS FOK MOTHERS AND THEIR CHILDREN. Com- 
piled by cue of tlie Compilers of " li) nins of the Ages." 
The favor with which the " Hymns of the Ages" was received in- 
duces the publisihers to believe that the same principles of .'•election 
applied to the mass of Children's Poetry must result in a collection 
worthy of a place in every family in the knd. It will be piibli>hed in 
the best manner, with iUuslialions by Billi/iys. Price, about 75 cents. 

PICTURES AND FLOWERS FOR CHILD-LOVERS. A 
charming and unique selection of Prose and Poetry,— humor- 
ous, descriptive, serious, &c. By a Mother. Price, 50 cents. 

The Silver-Penny Series. 
PATTY WILLIAMS S VOYAGE. 

THE STORY OF THE PRINCESS NARINA and her Silver- 
feathered Shoes. 

NOBODY'S CHILD, and other Stories. Edited by the Author of 
" Violet," " Daisy," " Noi.sy Herbert," etc. 

SUNNY-EYED TIM, the Observant Little Boy. By the Author 
of " Faith and Patience," etc. 

THEDA AND THE IMOUNTAIN. By the Author of "Sum- 
mer with the Little Grays." 

JUTHOO AND HIS SUNDAY SCHOOL. A Tale of Child- 
Life in India. By the Bruhmin, J. G. Gangooly. 
These little books, to be called the "Silver-Penny Series," 

are published in an attractive manner, at the low pri( e of twetiti/Jive 

cents each, to meet the demand for good but chcup Juveniles. Others 

will be added from time to time. 

SAWYER'S TRANSLATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
Vol. I. coiitaiiiing the Hebrew Prophets. (Vols. II. and ill., 
coinpltting the Old Testament, will speedily follow.) 

KORMAK : an Icelandic Romance of the Tenth Century. In Six 
Cantos. 

A PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATION OF "WOMAN'S RIGHT 
TO LABOR : " being an Autobiographical Letter of intense 
interest from Dr. Marie Zakrzewska. 

NINETY DAYS' WORTH OF EUROPE. ByRev. E. E. ITale. 
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. By a Contributor to the At- 
lantic Monthly. 
\X^ Various new enterprises, which will he duly announced, are 
in contemplation for the Spring. 

WALKER, WISE, & CO., 

245 Washington Street, Boston. 



^Latest Publications, see pages 23 and 24.J 

CATALOGUE OF BOOKS 

PUBLISHED AND FOE SALE BY 

¥ALKER, WISE, AND COMPANY, 

245 Washington Street, 

BOSTON, MASS. 



f):5= Amj of our books are sent free on receipt of the advertised price. 

tty' From the regular prices, a liberal discount is made to those purchasing in 
quantities, for Parish, Sunday-School, or Social Libraries, or for distribution. 



RECENT PUBLICATIONS. 

LIFE OF JESUS. By Dr. Carl Hase, Professor of Theology 
in the University of Jena. Translated from the German by 
James F. Clarke. 12mo. 75 cents. 

Of this important work the translator says • — "Among the many 
works on the same sut))ect which have appeared in Germany, this of 
Hase is distintruished l)y uniting decision with impartiality, and mod- 
eration of opinion with entire freedom. The book avoids extremes, 
without trying to avoid them. It treats its subject with fearless ear- 
nestness, but the result arrived at is neither the conclusion of Strauss 
nor that of Hengsteuberg." 

" Hase is distinguished for his freedom from extreme views, his wide range of 
learning, and his geniality and eloquence of expression." — JV. Y. Tribune. 

" In none of the popular Conmientaries can one obtain the information impart- 
ed here ; in no other volume are the Gospels so sifted and criticised, always 
with the thoroughness of a deep thinker and a profound scholar, but also with 
the devoutness of a reliirious spirit." — JSTeio Coviiavt, Chicago. 

" An invaluable book ti> students of the New Testament We feel as if 

we were readinsr the work of a theologian, disposed to doubt, but compelled by 
evidence to believe." — Boston Transcript. 

" [t hears evidence of profound learning and a crit'ca! knowledge of the Bible, 
together with a thorough acquaintance with modern Bible critics." — Christian 
Freeman. 

"This is a concise treatise, packed with German learnine, and characterized 
by moderation, sagacity, impartiality, aiid reverence, with far less than usual of 
the Geruian haze and mistiness of thouuht and style." — Christian Ren-ister. 

" In the main, Dr. Hase contends for the iiistorical veracity of the Gospels in 
opposition to the mythical theory of Strauss. Indeed his criticisms iipon this 
point are so thorough and satisfactory, that every Biblical student should put 
himself in possession of them."— JV. Y. Independent. 



4 WALKER, WISE, & CO. S PUBLICATIONS. 

The New Commentary. 

DISQUISITIONS AND NOTES ON THE GOSPELS.— 
MATTHEW. By Rev. Johx H. Morison, D. D. 12mo. 
$ 1.25. 

This important work, •which has been long in preparation, and 
upon Avhifh the accurate and accomplished author hns bestowed great 
labor and thought, will, it is believed, meet a decided want in this 
department of knowledge. The publishers invite public attention 
to it. 

" The object of this work is to assist in the interpretation of the Gospels. It 
does not sceit to go beyond the auihorily of Jes-us. li decs not undertake to 
sliovv what the Evangelists ought to have said, and to Jorce tiieir language into 
accordance with it." — Extract from the Pnface. 

"The author has done his W(.rk well, and the book will prove a most inter- 
esting and useful help to students of the New 'I'estanient.'' — Bunton ^dvertLt<er. 

"The 'Notes' evince a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures, an extensive 
acquaintance with ancient and modern commentators, and strong native powers 
of anal V sis." — Saturdaij Evening Gazette. 

" We cannot refrain from heartily commending the spirit in which this work 
is conceived and expressed. The atliiude <if the author, and the one into which 
lie seeks to lead his readers, is that of a reverent student of the words of Christ, 
placing perfect faith on all his teachings, and seeking only, by freeing the mind 
from the trammels of prejudice and j)rcconceived opinions, to arrive at the true 
meaning of tliose teachings. This loving and reverential spirit, united to ripe 
scholarship, abundantly fits the autiior for his task, and makes his work a valu- 
able guide to students ot the Bible." — Boston Journal. 

" It is not merely a collection of brief notes explanatory of words and facts in 
the Common Version, but to these are added succinct yet luminous essays on 
the most difficult and questioned points in the history and teachings of Christ. 
Mr. RIorison submits implicitly to the authority of the Saviour, accepts all he 
said and did, and only seeks honestly to interpret it, with all the lights tl own 
upon it in eighteen and a half centuries VVe need say nothing of his well- 
known clear logic and beautiful per-picuify of style, his nu ral glow, his spiritual 
insight, his nice perception and quick sympathy with all the peculiar loveliness 
of the character of Jesws. He understatids because he loves, and loving, sees 
much that escapes the cold eye of merely intellectual criticism." — Christian 
Register. 



JESUS THE INTERPRETER OF NATURE, AND OTHER 
SERMONS. By Rev. Thomas Hill, President of Antioch 
College. 12mo. 7.5 cents. ^ 

" Mr. Hill is one of the clearest and most logical writers of the present day, 
and this volume bears the impress of a sound and thorough scholarsiiip, and a 
desire to set forth great truths in a plain yet terse style."— Sat. Evening Gazette. 

" Clear in statement, earnest in feeling, with a loving aiipreciation of nature, 
and a deep, reverent faith in revelation, they will find man} te'dders." — Lowell 
VoT, Populi. 

" These discourses are imbued with that deep evangelical piety, and illustrated 
by that wide, philosophical outUxdv, for which their author is so eminent." — 
Christian Inquirer. 

" Mr. Hill writes so simply and purely that a child may understand him, and 
yet his views are broad, scholarly, and "impressive .... Among all the books 
of the dav, we know of none that has impressed us so powerfully and so favor- 
ably."— Phil. City Item. 

"Full of quickening thoughts." — S. S. Gazette. 

" A book both pleasant and instructive to read." — Boston Recorder. 

*' A mine of wealth." — /fjjj^Aam Journal. 



TTALKEK, WISE, & CO. 3 TUBLICATIONS. 5 

HITS AT AMERICAN WHIMS, AND HINTS FOR HOME 
USE. Thick l2nio. $1.00. 

This live volume contains about fifty spicy and pithy Essays, on 
such topics as the following : — 

How to make Millionnaires. — Whim aiiainst Dancing. — Education sans IVForals. 
— Hints for proniotins Juvenile Depravity. — Straits of a Man of Fortune. — 
Parks and Promenades. — Jury Trials, and Trials of the Jury. — Religious 
Creeds ol i\e\v England. — Hospitality, &:c. 

There is clear thinking and straight-out talking in the book, and 
it will commend itself to whoever shall look into its pages. 

" We hardly know of a work more abounding with humor, instruction, and 
geniality." — JV'Vw York Evening Post. 

" It is decidedly a readable book, and one richly worth the reading, too." — 
PortsT.ioutk Chronicle. 

" An uncommonly clever book, full of wise and good notions, lively sallies of 
wit, pungent satire, shrewd comments, wise suggestions, and earnest advice." — 
JVew York Express 

"It is an interesting volume, pleasantly and genially written." — Worcester 
Transcript. 

" Tliere are many sound and sensible articles in the volume." — Hartford 
Christian Secretary. 

" This work ctmtains a great deal of information, and a large quantity of com- 
mon sense." — E.->sex County Democrat. 

" U attacks the prevailing follies and false notions of the day, and is written 
in a lively, pungent, and agreeable style." — South Reading Gazette. 

" It ought to have a good circulation." — Dover Murning Star. 

'• Here is a book thoroughly live, vigorous, and practical." — JVew Covenant, 
Chicago. 

HIGHWAYS OF TRAVEL ; or a Summer in Europe. By Mrs. 
M. J M. Sweat. 12mo. Printed on delicately tinted paper. 
$1.00. 

Although our author's route was confined for the most part to the 
usual track of Continental tourists, the time chosen for the trip aiford- 
ed opportunities for observation which would not occur, probably, 
twice in a lifetime Being at Paris at the time of the grawd Exposition 
Universelle, and also on tlie occasion of the visit of Queen Victoria to 
the Emperor, her brilliant pen found ample and congenial employ- 
.ment in chronicling the gorgeous displays incident to those important 
events. And those most familiar with *.he pul)lished records of Con- 
tinental travel, and even those who have passed many times over the 
routes, will read this volume with interest, from the keenness of its 
observation, the freshness of its style, and its multiplicity of interest- 
ing detail." 

" Mrs. Sweat has given us in these pages a rich freight from foreign lands." — 
JVortli American Review. 

" One finds, on almost every page, some shrewd observation, or practical sng- 
gesti(m, or genial witticism, which lingers long in the memory." — Christian 
Examiner. 

" Fresh, vigorous, denoting a remarkable keenness of observation, and a bril- 
liant power of description." — JVorfo/k County Journal. 

'• She has the faculty of taking tiie reader with her, and of impartinff an inter- 
est to every scene to which she introduces him." — Portsmouth Journal. 

"She enjoyed heartily, and describes easily and gracefully." — Boston Journal. 

" Conveys much information alike to those who are interested in a record of 

1* 



WALKER, WISE, & CO. S PUBLICATIONS. 

travels merely, and those who seek more minute information of the condition of 
European countries." — Lowell Cvuriir. 

" Attractive and animated. An agreeable book, by one who sees well, and 
writes well." — Boston Trait scrip.. 

"One of the most interesting publications of the day. It presents entertain- 
ment and instruction. It is a creditable production and a literary acquisition." 

— Boston Post. 

" Fine and healthy writing, sensible seeing, and much infiwrmation." — Boitow 
Atlas and Bee. 

" Agreeably and pleasantly written." — J\''no York Courier and Enquirer. 

'' Mrs. Sweat has a spell in the nib of her ))en which gives a newness and 
freshness even to familiar tilings, and a grace and beauty to all her descriptions." 

— Providence Daily Journal. 

" Is deserving <if a wide circulation." — J<'nr.hiiry]inrt ITrrald. 

" The very looks of the volume are irresistibly inviting." — Saturday Express. 

WOMAN'S RIGHT TO LABOH ; or, Low Wa.jrcs and Hard 
V/ork. Three Lectures by Mrs. C. H. Dall. i6mo. Paper, 
50 cents ; cloth, 62 cents. 

I. Death or Dishonor. 
II. Verify yoi;r Credentials. 
III. The Opening of the Gates. 

The importance of the topics discussed in this little hook, with the 
earnest spirit and forcil)le style in wliicli they are presented, liave won 
for it a universality of commendation qtiite remarkable. The follow- 
ing are a few of the utterances of the critics : — 

"The reasoning is cogent and unanswerable. So far as we can judge, she 
has made out a plain case." — JWw York Ertnino- Post. 

" A book that ought to be read ; an earnest book; a suggestive book." — Bos- 
ton Transcript. 

"Mrs. Da 1 1 's book contains farts and arguments which every philanthropist 
should ponder with grave consideration." — Providence Daily Journal. 

"Many of the practical suggestions in this volume seem feasible and valuable, 
and we hope they may be carried out." — Boston Journal. 

" It is a hook worth reading, and pondering well." — Dover Morvinrr Star. 

" The women of America owe it to themselves to disseminate this book by 
tens of thousands." — Philadrlp/iia City Item. 

" We hail the ajipearaiice of this little book." — Dedham Oaiette. 

"This book should be carefully read in every family It is not possible 

to contradict the author's lacts ; and we do not see how it is possible to confute 
her argument." — Worcester Spy. 



NEW JUVENILE BOOKS. 
All the Children's Library. 

This entirely veiv and ori'f/inal series of Juveniles combines several 
especially attractive features. Tlie plan adopted is that oi' (jradation, 
the first two books on the list bein<r designed for very younjjc children, 
just commencing to read. Numbers 3 and 4 meet the requirements 
of those three or four years older ; while the last two of the set aviII 
interest older boys and girls, and may be read with pleasure by almost 
any one. 

6 vols., neatly put up in box, $3.50, or, sold separately, as fol- 
lows : — 



•WALKER, WISE, & CO. S PUBLICATIONS. 7 

NOISY HERBERT, and other Stories for Small Children, 50 cents. 
THE R. B. R 's : My Little Neighbors, 50 cents. 
BESSIE GRANT'S TREASURE, 50 cents. 
A SUMMER WITH THE LITTLE GRAYS, 50 cents. 
FAITH AND PATIENCE. A Story — and something more — 

for Boys, 75 cents. 
MODESTY AND MERIT, 75 cents. 
All fully and finely illusti-ated, and tastefully bound. 

" These Books may be unreservedly recommended." — Daily Advertiser. 

"We cordially recommend them." — Sunday -School Gazette. 

" This charminj; Library, for variety and adaptation to meet the wants of the 
various ages of a family group, is certainly unsurpassed." — Christian Register. 

" For lessons of truth, honesty, generosity, courtesy, and all of manliness (not 
more) that should be found in the ingenuous boy, — and these lessons, not in a 
didactic form, but insinuated in the natural course of a graceful and charming 
story, — we have seldom seen 'Faith and Patience' paralleled, never sur- 
passed, in juvenile literature. Its morality is that of the Sermon on the Mount, 
and it is redolent throughout of the spirit of the Divine Teacher." — J^Torth Am. 
Revirio. 

" We can recommend these books as particularly adapted to the amusement 
and instruction of children. The pints of the stories are unexceptionable, and 
they are made the vehicle of imparting valuable information on general subjects. 

" ' Faith and Patience ' is a capital story, and no child can read it through 
without receiving with the pleasure a great many interesting facts." — Oreevfield 
Gazette. 

'■ Very pretty, useful, and amusing, admirably adapted to instruction and 
amusement." — Bo.iton Post. 

" These six volumes, enclosed in their neat box, form a very rif h entertain- 
ment for children of various ages, beginning with the youngest. We commend 
the series to parents." — Monthly Religious Magazine. 



ALICE'S DREAM. A Tale of Christmas-Time. Two exquisite 
Illustrations by Billings. 50 cents. 

A charmingly written Christmas Story, worthy the perasal of old 
and young. 

"A tone of practical common sense and piety pervades 'Alice's Dream,' and 
we strongly recommend it." — Saturday Erpress. 

" The story is pleasantly told, and conveys a fitting Christmas lesson of true, 
unselfish charity." — Boston Journal. 

" Calculated "to exercise a good and refining influence upon the hearts of the 
young." — Essex' Co. Den. 

" Most excellent reading for the little folks." — Dsdham Gazette. 

" A beautiful little book." 

" A charming and instructive story, full of natural incidents, and set off with 
the graces of a cultivated manner and the gems of moral illustration." — Phil. 
City Item. 

" The story is one of much pathos, is written in a chaste and elegant style, 
the moral lessons it teaches of the highest and purest character." — JVetc Cov- 
enant, Chicago. 

" It is a book that mothers may safely place in the hands of their young 
daughters, because its pure and beautiful teachings could only emanate from a 
true Christian's heart." — Penn. State Journal. 

" We cannot get too many such books into the hands of children." — Hartford 
Religious Herald. 



8 WALKER, WISE, & CO. S PUBLICATIONS. 

FRED FREELAND ; or, The Chain of Circumstances. 75 cents 

" The storv and the moral are of the very best character for the young " — 
Rev C. F. Barnard. 

'• Fitted to exert a salutary iiiflnence upon young minds."— Rev. Ji. A. Miner. 

" We cordially reconimeud this finely writieu and instructive tale." — PMo- 
delphia JsTationa' Jirsus. 

" Exceedingly interesting and instructive ^'^ — Dover Gazette. 

*' Cannot fail to interest and improve." — BurUnirton Sentinel. 

"Attractive iu style, and unexceptionable in matter." — Woodstock Spirit of 
the A<Te. 

•' Well conceived and happily executed." — Boston Christian Era. 

"An excellent volume." — Qreenfield Oazette. 

" We can, with much pleasure, commend it." — Fall River J\rews. 

" A good hook." — Harerhill Banner. 

" Inculcating an excellent moral." — Peterson^s Magazine. 

"Cinite spirited, and will be read with intere.<l." — JVortliampton Oazette. 

"The general tendency of tlie book is wholesome." — Salem Observer. 

" A most attractive litile vchime." ^mrusta Jiac 

" An absorbingly interesting story." — School Visitor. 

Scores of other notices coiikl be added ; but these serve to indicate 
the estimation in which the book is lield. 

It should be in every Sunday-School Library and every family. 



STANDARD THEOLOGICAL AND DEVOTIONAL BOOKS. 

ALGER, (Rev. William R.) HISTORY OF THE CROSS. 
A beautiful little book of devotion, gathering all the sacred asso- 
ciations belonging to the cross, and referring to the varied litera- 
ture which that olyect has created. i^O cents. 

'' This little work presents, in a compact form and winning manner, some of 
the best things which have been written and sung about the Cross, and gives 
both its symbolic history as an ecclesiastical emblem, and .«ome of the secret 
causes of its power over human heari.s and souls." — S. S. Oazette. 

ALTAR AT HOME (THE). 12mo. 60 cents. Sec Hi/mn-Books 
and Liturgies, page 21. 

BARTOL. (Rev. C. A.) GRAINS OF GOLD. Selections from 
the Writin<js of Rev. C. A. Bartol. A beautiful little gift, con- 
taining gems of thought from one of the most gifted writers. 
25 cents. 

WORD OF THE SPIRIT TO THE CHURCH. 



16mo. 50 cents. 

" We have read with delight, and we believe with entire assent, every word 
that is here written." — Religiotis Masazine. 

" An earnest and forcible plea for the spirit as against formalism and dogma- 
tism ; for external simplicity, social loyalty, and personal fidelity as the essential 
chararteristics of the religious Wfe.^^ — Loicell JVew.t. 

" An able, spiritual, and searrhinc di-conrse, which may vastly enlighten and 
improve the thoughtful, inquiring, unsettled or scGpticsil mind.'' — East Boston 
Ledger. 



WALKER, WISE, & CO. S PUBLICATIONS. 9 

BEAED, (Rev. John R., D. D., of England.) ADDRESSES 
TO THE YOUNG ON THEIR ORIGIN, DUTY, AND 
DESTINY, in answer to the Questions, "What am I?" 
"Whence am II" "Why am IV " Whither am I going V 
" What are my Wants ? " " Who will give me Aid 1 " 50 cts. 

These great questions are briefly considered in this small book, 
which condenses a vast deal of thought into a few pages. To inquir- 
ing, self-reliant young men it is commended as a stimulus to thought 
and a guide to peace. 

HISTORICAL AND ARTISTIC ILLUSTRATIONS 

OF THE TRINITY. Showmg the Rise, Progress, and De- 
cline of the Doctrine. With many elucidatory Engravings. 1 
vol. 8vo. $ 1.00. 

Full of curious lore, and especially interesting as illustrating the 
manner in which the Trinity was symbolically represented during 
the Dark Ages. 

LETTERS ON THE GROUNDS AND OBJECTS 



OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE. Addressed to a Young 
Man in a State of Indecision. 2 vols. $ 2.00. 

REASONS WHY I AM A UNITARIAN, In a Series of Letters 
to a Friend. 50 cents. 

THE CONFESSIONAL; a View of Romanism, chiefly from au- 
thoritative Papal Sources. $ L25. 

A CRITICAL HISTORY OF RATIONALISM IN GER- 
MANY, from its Origin to the Present Time. By Amand 
Saintes. Edited by Dr. Beard. 8vo. $ 1..25. 

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE DIVINE IN CHRISTIANITY. 
A series of Discourses. $1.25. 

THE PEOPLE'S DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE. 

London Edition. 2 vols. $4.00. With Maps, and over One 
Thousand Engravings. It is called, by competent judges, the 
best book in this department in the English language. Read the 
following : — 

" Having examined with much interest 'The People's Bible Diction- 
ary,' by Rev. Dr. J. R. Beard, of England, and believing it to be a highly val- 
uable addition to our Biblical literature, we are gratified in learning that the 
American Unitarian Association has imported a number of copies, at a greatly 
reduced price, for the use of parish libraries and Sunday-school teachers. 

"Frederic H. Hedge, 
Ezra S. Gannett." 

A REVISED ENGLISH BIBLE THE WANT OF 

THE CHURCH AND THE DEMAND OF THE AGE. 

Comprising a Critical History of the Authorized Version, and. 
Corrections of numerous Mistranslations. 1vol. 12mo. $1.00. 

The subject of a new translation of the Bible is awakening great 
attention in England, and must, erelong, attract special notice in this 



10 WALKER, WISE, & CO's. PUBLICATIONS. 

country. Di'. Beard's book shows tlic pressino; need of this move- 
ment. An En_<rlisli Review says " Dr. Beard writes with authority 
as a scholar ; and liis thorough gras]) of his subject gives singular 
value and imprcssiveness to his statements." 

SABBATH LEISURE ; 'or, Religious Recreations in 

Prose and Verse. Suitable for reading in the Intervals of Public 
"Worship. This is a collection of interesting stories, instructive 
historical anecdotes, select pieces of ])oetry, all breathing a ciicer- 
ful religious spirit, and otiering a charm to an unoccupied Sun- 
day hour. 80 cents. 

BEGINNING (THE) AND GROWTH OF THE CHRISTIAN 
LIFE ; or, The Sunday-School Teacher. IGmo. 50 cents. 

'= We earnestly commend tlio book to pastors, teachers, and parents 

Its errand must i)e a blessed one." — Christian Examinrr. 

" It is written in a style of preat beauty, is cliaracterized by deep and fervent 
feelinjr, and its tearhiniis are penerally ^wvh as indicate a strojig svuinaihy with 
the evaniL'elical s|)irit." — Pnnttni Rrcordrr. 

" It is full of valuable Jiiiiis and sn«ri!estionp, cominf: from one who Fcems to 
Itave drunk deojily at the fountain of truth, and who possesses the disposition 
and the pnwcr to imparl to otJiers the results of his own experience." — Cam- 
bridtre. Chrojiicle. 

" It is a book for parents to (rive tlieir children jnst leaving home, or staying 
at home; fur ministers to |)ut ii.to the liands of their (larishioiiers ; ti r young 
persons to olitain, w ho are seeking to live the true life ' hid with Christ inGod,' 
and for every Sunda'-scliool teacher to take as a chart and an inspiration." — 
RcUgioun MuiUhly. 

BULFINCH. (REv.SxEniErG.j COMMUNION THOUGHTS. 
IGmo. 63 cents. 

" We especially commend it to all those who are desirous of becoming relig- 
ions [irofessors, but hesitating about their fitness No one can read it 

without becoming better." — Taunton Whig. 

THE HARP AND THE CROSS. 12mo. 60 cents. 

The work contains between one and two hundred gems of sacred 
poetry, culled from all the best writers in the English language, by 
one who has himself added some of the choices'- contributions to this 
department of letters. 

" It is a beautiful collection of devotional poeirj', made with pood judgment 
and taste. It will find a place in every devoticmal library, and give comfort and 
satisfaction to many hearts." — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

"This is a judicious and meritorious collection of relipioiis poetry, from which 
we have no dount many will derive instruction and consolation. It is drawn 
from sources less familiar, and seems to have been made with great pood taste. 
That noble poem, ' The Uurial of Moses.' is enough to give value to the book." 
— Boston Daily Courier, 

BURNxVP, (Rev. G. W.. D.D.) POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO 
UNITARIAN CHRISTIANITY CONSIDERED AND 
ANSWERED. In Seven Discourses. 16ino. 38 cents. 

Contents. — The Position of Unitarianism Defined. Unitarians 
not Infidels. Explaining the Bible and Explaining it away. Uni- 
tarianism not mere Morality. Unitarianism Evangelical Christianity. 
Unitarianism does not tend to Unbelief. Dr. Watts a Unitarian. 



TVALKER, WISE, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 11 

"These topics Mr. Biirnap treats with a frei=hnei=s of thoiight which will 
render the volume acce()talile to those who have a taste for readiiiji of tliis sort, 
while its general merits plare it in the riass of Wirks one would wish to see 
exten-!ively circul ited amomi ihi>-;e who think that Unifariaiiisni has nothing to 
stand upon, or that it is a doctrine lull of impiety." — Chrcstian Examiner. 

CHANNIXG, (Ret. W. E.) MEMOIRS. 3 vols. 12mo. $1.50. 



SELECTIONS FROM THE WORKS OF WIL- 
LIAM E. CHANXING, I). D. A handsome 12mo volume of 
4S0 paired, containing " all the clearest and fullest statements he 
gave of his views concerning theology and religion." 12mo. 
60 cents. 



THOUGHTS. Tliis little book contains those short, 

epigrammatic sentences into which Dr. Channing so often con- 
densed his grandest thoughts. 32mo. 25 cents. 

A new edition, on line paper. 

WORKS, entire, in six volumes bound in three. All the 

published writings of Dr. Channing collected by him before his 
death, with his introductory remarks, are included in this edition. 
$ 2.0J. 

CHANNING AND DR. DEWEY. SIN AND ITS CONSE- 
QUENCES. 16mo. 16 cents. 

Two discourses are here published in a beautiful form, — one by 
Dr. ChanniuiT, the other by Dr. Dewey, — presenting the great Gospel 
truths of a future retribution in a solemn light, without any of the 
cant so common on the subject. 

CHANNING. (William Henry.) THE MEMOIR AND 

WRITINGS OF JAMES HANDASYD PERKINS. 2 vols. 

12mo. With an engraving of the Author. S 1.50. 

A glowing picture of the struggles of a gifted young man in his 

search after truth, and in a short but memorable ministry ; and no 

thoughtful reader can peruse it without deep interest and profit. 

CHILD'S (THE) MATINS AND VESPERS. By a Mother. 
Comprising Meditations and Prayers for Morning and Evening, 
&c. 32rao. 38 cents. 

'« A capital little hook to lay on voiir child's tahle heside the Bihle. that good 
and holy thouuhts may be the tirst and last every day "— Ohio Inquirer. 

" The parent who wishes to keep the heart of the child pure, to form hahits of 
prayer, to inspire the yoiins mind with pmfitalde reflections, and lead the early 
years into proper spiritual habits, will be greatly assisted by this little volume." 

— Christian Era. 

"A beautiful idea, beautifully carried out A collection of simple re- 
flections for a youns child, to inspire il with right thoughts towards its Heavenly 
Father." — Albany Transcript. 

" A beautiful litile volume, the contents of which are calculated to develop 
the Christian graces in the young heart."— We.^tern Lit. Messenger. 

" An admirable little book ; the best of the kind we have ever seen."— Cam- 
bridge Chronicle. 



12 WALKER, WISE, & CO.'s PUBLICATIONS. 

CLARKE, (James Freeman.) THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 
OF PRAYER. 12mo. GO cents. It discusses the whole sub- 
ject of the foundation of prayer, objections to it, reasons and 
preparations for it, its results and bearings uj)on the spiritual life, 
in the bold and clear style of its author. 

"Wo can hardly prairie tliis book too highly. It fully meets the qucsliona 
which it attempts to discuss. We know of no writer who addresses tlic relig- 
ious world from precisely snch a standpoint as Mr. Clarke. lie is eminently 
free fri'm all sectarian limitations, and therefore speaks to a much larjrer audience 
than most writers upon relifrious or theological questions. He powerfully ap- 
peals to the reason, while he couiinually addresses the spiritual nature." — 
Salem Oazctte. 



Ilase. 



TRANSLATION OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. See 



EARLY PIETY ; or, Recollections of Harriet B . 1 vol. 

16mo. 16 cents. 

The life of a iriftcd and devout Sunday-school pupil is here sketched 
in a form peculiarly attractive to the young, and offering them a high 
and quickening example. 

ELIOT, (Rev. William G.) THE DISCIPLINE OF SOR- 
ROW. Second Edition. Hundreds of bereaved families have 
expressed their grateful sense of the value of these soothing and 
hopeful words. 16mo. 30 cents. 

" To all in affliction, we commend the angel-ministries of this fair volume." 

— Boston Evening Transcript. 

DOCTRINAL LECTURES. Eleven thousand copies 

of this little book have been circulated. Probably no work of 
the kind presents the great leading doctrines of Christianity, as 
understood by Unitarians, in a clearer style, and in a more kind- 
ly and conciliating temper. 16mo. 30 cents. 



EARLY RELIGIOUS EDUCATION, considered as a 

Divinely Appointed Way to the Regenerate Life. 16mo. 50 cts. 

" A verj' clear and sensible plea for early religrious education as the bcst means 
for working the needed change in tlie heart." — Ch. Examiner. 

" Characterized by sound and di.-criniinafing good sense, and warmed and 
vitalized by a truthful, fervent, and rational faitli in Chx'isi." — Boston Mtlas, 



LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 1 vol. 16mo. C3 

cents; full gilt, $ 1.00. 

Contents. — An Appeal. Self-Education, Leisure Time. Trans- 
gression. The Ways of Wisdom. Religion. 

" The practical wisdom, the habits of close observation, and the sincere piety 
of Mr. Eliot, united with what we must consider an essential element in his 
succe.ss. — his sympathy with the young, — have fitted him to discharge his task 
surcpssfully." — Christian Examiner. 

" The pious author exerts all the persuasion that a most ardent heart can use, 
to turn his readers from error, and induce tiiem to walk in the ♦ paths of peace.' " 
— Baltimore American, 



WALKER, WISE, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 13 

"A book that every younji man tliroushout the nation should read and make 
the ciuistant companicm of "his leisure lioiirs." — Detroit Tribune. 

" Such hooks are angels of mercy to ihe young, as temptations multiply and 
tlirong around tlieir steps." — Ohio Observer. 

ELIOT, (Rev. William G.) LECTURES TO YOUNG 
WOMEN. 1vol. 16rao. 63 cents ; full gilt, $ 1.00. 

CoxTEXTS. — An Appeal. Home. Duties. Education. EoUies. 
Woman's Mission. 

'• We know of no hook which we can recommend so unhesitatingly as this of 
Mr. Ehot. " — Ckriatian Examiner. 

" Inciilcatina the purest morality, and deeply imbued with the spirit of relig- 
ion, it is one of those very few hooks that a father may safely place in the hands 
of his daughter." — Rluther's .Assistant. 

PURNESS, (Rev. N. H., D. D.) DOMESTIC WORSHIP. 
12mo. 50 cents. See Hi/mn-Books, Liturgies, ^^c, page 21. 

BASE, (Prof. Carl.) LIFE OF JESUS. 12mo. 75 cents. 
See Latest Publications, page 3. 

HILL, (Rev. Thos.) SERMONS. 12mo. 75 cents. See Latest 
Publications, page 4. 

HOMEWARD PATH (THE). By the Author of "Beginning 
and Growth of the Christian Life." 16mo. 50 cents. This 
admirable little volume is worthy the wide reputation it has 
attained. 

LAYS FOR THE SABBATH. A Collection of Religious Poetry, 
compiled by Emily Taylor. Revised, with Additions, by 
John Pierpont. New edition. 16mo. Attractively bound. 
50 cents. 

" The pieces all breathe a pure and elevated spirit, and here and there is an 
exquisite efTiision of genius, which answers to the holiest wants of the soul." — 
Cliristian Examiner. 

LIVERMORE, (Rev. A. A.) THE EPISTLE OF PAUL TO 
THE ROMANS. With a Commentary and Revised Transla- 
tion, and Introductory Essays. 1 vol. i2mo. 75 cents. 

"As an aid in understanding and appreciating the true spirit of the Epistle, 
we know of no work which could take the place of the one before us." — Chris- 
tian Renrister. 

" The work abounds in philosophical criticism, and literary and historical 
information ; and its vivacity and eloquence commend it to a more general pop- 
ularity than theological treatises commonly achieve." — Journal of Commerce. 

MARTINEAU, (Rev. James.) STUDIES OF CHRISTIAN- 

I FY ; or, Timely Thoughts for Religious Thinkers. A Series 
of Papers by James Martineau. Edited by William R. 
Alger. $1.00. 

" Take this volume for all in all, it is the product of a bold, independent, and 
original mind : from the begiuniug to the end it throbs with life ; is suggestive in 
almost every sentence ; opens wide visions of thought on questions that concern 
2 



14 WALKER, WISE, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

the sublimest interests of the soul, and deals witli ihem in a manner worthy of 
their sublimity ; breathes everywhere the liumanity of a strotiji yet gentle na- 
ture ; arouses the heart of the brave, the generous, the honorable, the heroic ; 
repels with righteous scorn the mean, the maudlin, the etTeminate, everything 
in idea or conduct that is spurious or unmanly ; is written in a style of musical 
variety, as well as soaring and expansive grandeur, and which only errs, when 
it does err, in an excess of lieauty ; contains more passages of striking, profound, 
and inspiring eloquence than we have often before met with in the same number 
of pages." — Boston Courier. 

MAURICE, (Prof.) THE PROPHETS AND KINGS OF 
THE OLD TESTAMENT. A Scries of Sermons preached 
in the Cliapel of Lincohi's Inn. By Rev. Frederic DE>risoN 
Maurice, Chaplain of Lincohi's Inn, and Professor of Divinity 
in King's College, London. 12mo. $ 1.2.5. 

" Ricli in learning and tliought and practical views of life." — Ch. Observer. 

"This work is approjjriate and remedial for tlie times. It is a voice against 
Idolatry and its effects, disunion, contention, and mental slavery." — Hartford 
Calendar 

" It evinces mucli learning and research, and is evidently imbued with a fer- 
vid and comprehensive spirit of Christian philanthropy." — Advocate. 

"The production of a deep thinker and a Christian scholar." — Keene JVews. 

"There is a freslmess and fulness of thought on every page." — Phil. Pres. 
Banner. 

" It is seldom that a volume of sermons more compact in style, more vigorous 
in diction, leading the mind into more interesting fields of study, falls from the 
public press." — Christian Era. 

" We recommend this volume to the careful study of our readers. They will 
find in it, not only rich helps, but also strong attractions, to the intelligent read- 
ing of the prophecies " — Prospective Review. 

" We have lingered over these pages with pleasure Wo must invite 

and strongly recommend our readers to buy the book, and give it a perusal, It 
is quite new in the line of exposition." — Christian Tunes. 

*♦ No statesman, no politician, no student of history, can fail to derive instruc- 
tion from these lectures." — Spectator. 

" We can a^ssure our readers that the volume w ill be found full of instruction 

and eminently suggestive We have followed his instructive pages with 

delight." — Christian Examiner. 

MILES, (Rev. H. A.) THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES. Their 
Origin, Peculiarities, and Transmission. Nine thousand copies 
of this book have been circulated. It is designed to meet the 
oft-repeated questions. How came the four biographies of Jesus 
to take their present shape ? and. What is the history of these 
writings from the time of their composition to the present day 1 
30 cents. 

" The work is well done, timely, and useful." — Christian Rcn-ister. 

" This little book has substantial value." — Prof. Huntington's Relig. Mag. 

MORISON, (Rev. John H., D. D.) DISQUISITIONS AND 
NOTES ON THE GOSPELS. 12mo. $1.25. Sec List of 
Latest Publications, page 4. 

MOUNTFORD, (William.) EUTHANASY ; or, A Happy Talk 
towards the End of Life. 16mo. $ 1 00. 
" This is a fresh, genial, sensible, inspiring, and sublime exposition of spiritual 

life No book has been written on the subject of Life, its meaning and 

its results, which we should be so glad to see sent everywhere, and everywhere 
read." 



WALKER, WISE, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 15 

NORTON, (Prof. Andrews.) GENUINENESS OF THE 
GOSPELS. This is the great work to which Mr. Norton con- 
secrated his life, and on which rests his enduring fame as a 
schoUir and critic. It brings together from the stoi'es of his great 
erudition, and illustrates by the strength of his massive argument, 
the reasons why an intelligent believer receives the Gospels as 
genuine histories. The library of no clergyman, or parish, or 
Sunday school can be considered as well furnished, that has not 
this inexhaustible treasury of learning and argument. Having 
purchased the edition of this work, it is now furnished at a 
reduced price. 3 vols. 8vo. $ 4.50. 

STATEMENT OF REASONS FOR NOT BE- 
LIEVING THE DOCTRINES OF TRINITARIANS 
CONCERNING THE NATURE OF GOD AND THE 
PERSON OF CHRIST. Second Edition. With a Memoir 
of the Author by Rev. Dr. Neavell of Cambridge. This is 
the fullest, the ablest, and most conclusive argument that has 
even been published on this subject. 12nio. $ 1.00. 

" Mr. Norton writes for intelligent men, for those who do not shrink from 
examination and patient thought, who are not disgusted at being required to 
exercise a manly independence, who seek for truth for truth's sake, and are 
willing to pay the price of its attainment. Such will find, in the work before 
us, ample materials for study and reflection." — Christian Examiner. 

NOTES, (Prof.) A COLLECTION OF THEOLOGICAL 
ESSAYS FROM VARIOUS AUTHORS. With an Intro- 
duction by George R. Noyes, D. D. $ 1.00. 

" A collection of thoughtful and carefully prepared papers on some of the 
leading topics of theological difference, from such men as Stanley and Jowett, 
Tholiick and Powell, Guizot, Newcome, Roland Williams, Edward Harwood, 
and Tliomas Brown, could not fail to possess both an immediate interest and a 
permanent value. Such is the character of the volume before us." — Professor 
Hunfing-tim^s Relimous Magazine. 

"So valuable a collection, so interesting, so advanced in thought, so liberal in 
tone, has never been made before." — Boston Evening Transcript. 

OBSERVATIONS ON THE BIBLE, FOR THE USE OF 
YOUNG PERSONS. This book, written by a distinguished 
layman of Boston, has been often successfully used as a Manual 
in Bible Classes. 12mo. 40 cents. 

Extract from the Preface: — "This little tract was written for my children, 
that, when they begin to perceive the difficulties which occur in reading the 
Bible, tiiey may be put in the way of discovering the explanation of them ; and 
that they may be in some degree prepared to meet and answer the cavils of the 
Infidel, and the pretensions of those who claim an exclusive right to the name 
of Christian." 

PEABODY, (Rev. A. P., D.D.) SERMONS DESIGNED TO 
FURNISH COMFORT AND STRENGTH TO THE 
AFFLICTED. A new and enlarged edition. 1 vol. 16mo. 
$1.00. 

It is almost, if not altogether, a work of supererogation to introduce 
editorial notices of this well-known and universally admired volume 



16 WALKER, WISE, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

of Discourses ; but wc insert two, from widel}- dissimilar (thco'ogical) 
sources : — 

" Not less cliapte and scliolarlj' in style, not less mature and elevating in 
thought, than those of tiie deceased pastor of King's ('hapel. - . . They 
touch hut little upon didactic theolofiy, and are mainly practical and hortatory i 
but they do strike their roots into Gethsemane and Calvary, and draw thence 
their richest consolations.'' — Independent. 

"They exhibit original thought, a high comprehension of religions duty and 
life, and extra(»rdinary power to control the attention. The style is eminently 
pure, and in many respects the discourses deserve to be considered model ser- 
mons." — Ziuii's Herald. 

COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLES. In Prepa- 



PERKINS, (James Handasyd.) MEMOIR OF. See Channing. 

RELIGIOUS CONSOLATION. 18mo. 50 cents. An excellent 
volutiic to place in the liands of the bereaved or afflicted, abound- 
ing^ as it does with hope and consolation. 

SEARS, (Rev. E IL) ATHANASIA ; or, Forc^leams of Immor- 
tality. In this work, the subjects of death and a future life are 
fully considered ; and chccrin<r views arc presented, which "turn 
the shadow of death into the morning." 16mo. 60 cents , bev- 
elled boards, 80 cents. 

The sale of Dr. Scars's works is constantly and regularly increas- 
ing. Athanasia has been reprinted in England, and both works sell 
largely in that country. 

" » Aihanasia ' will stand as a lovely classic in sacred literature, and a beauti- 
ful inspiration of iinre devotional feeling The best test of merit of a 

book is when we feel that we have been made better by reading it ; and while 
' Athanasia' widens the field of intellectual vision, and makes solid and sub- 
stantial the bridge from time to eternity, it quickens the conscience in its sense 
of duty, and softens the heart witli a tenderer and more celestial love." — JVew 
York Christian Inquirer. 

" The American Unitarian Association have never published a work which 
will reach the core of more souls than this. The other productions of Mr. Sears 
have been marked by the loftiest moral beauty in the purest and most elegant 
diction; but this is his chef d^a-uvrc in many respects. ... On the whole, 
we know no religious work of the age adapted to make a deeper, more practi- 
cal, and more gladdening impression on thoughtful and lofty minds.^' — Button 
Christian Register. 

REGENERATION. Sixth Edition. It describes the 

necessity and process of the irrcat transformation which the Gos- 
pel is designed to make in the individual life, and is written in a 
style of exceeding freshness and beauty. 44 cents. 

SEVEN STORMY SUNDAYS. See Hymn-Boolcs, Liturgies, ^c. 

SHELDON, rREV. Dr.) A SERIES OF SERMONS. By Rev. 

D. N. SiTELDOx, D. D., late Pastor of the Elm Street Baptist 

Church, Bath, Me. 12mo. $1.00. 
" It is a model work in point of directness, explicilncss, honesty, and candor. 
Its literary execution indicates equal strength and culture of intellect ; and the 
Oration which closes the volume is one of the most vigorous, thoughtful, and 
suggestive performances of its kind that it has ever been our fortune to hear or 
read." — J\rorth .^me-rican Review. 



WALKER, WISE, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 17 

" A series of Sermons marked with earnestness^ force, and ability." — Utica 
Observer. 

" A work of great merit, ralciilatcd to open to tlie inquiring student of the 
ways of God to man, a simple solution of questions too long hidden in the 
obscure snares of theological perplexity." — Portland Transcript, 

"The Sermons are full of instruction." — JV. H. Gazette. 

" Tlie Book is a rational, manly, and Christian protest against the enslaving 
tendencies and paralyzing influence of Calvinism." — S. S. Gazette. 

"The seeker after truth will find nnich in this vohiuie that is entertaining, 
and perhaps much that is convincing." — Bedford Sentinel. 

STONE, (Ret. Thos. T.) THE ROD AND THE STAFF. 

60 cents. 

" This work is not to be placed in the same rank with the small, meagre, sen- 
timental manuals, which religious societies are perpetually issuing as devotional 
literature, and which pious people dutifully purchase for the torment of their 
childieii. It is large, genial, written for all souls, good for everybody. It de- 
serves to rank with Jeremy Taylor. Few can read thoughtfully the chapters 
of this volume without feeling that an addition has been made to their mental 
resources." — Christian Inquirer. 

"It is written in a sweet and earnest spirit, which must commend it to all 
who seek to nourish the life of Christian piety in their hearts." — Christian 
Examiner. 

"The work is written in an excellent spirit, and embraces many valuable 
ideas." — Boston Journal. 

" This work is not of a sectarian, nor yet of a doctrinal, but chiefly of a 
devotional character. It bears the impress of a highly-gifted mind, that has no 
partiality for a beaten track." — Boston Puritan Recorder. 

TAYLER, (JoHx J.) CHRISTIAN ASPECTS OF FAITH 

AND DUTY. Discourses by John James Tayler, B. A. 

From tlie London Edition. With an Introduction. 12rno. 50e. 

These discourses are by one of the most prominent clergymen in 

the EnoJish Unitarian Church ; and Rev. Dr. Bellows of New York, 

in his Introduction to the volume, recommends them as among the 

best expressed and most thoughtful he has met. He says : — 

" TJiere is a frankness and courage in meeting doubts and difficulties ; a nnion 
of boldness of ihounht with reverence of spirit ; a sympathy with the explorers 
and pioneers of modern thought, blended with gratitude and docility toward 
past thinkers ; a manly, business-like dealing with religion, — which, together, 
make this volume singularly pertinent to the wants of the times, and admirably 
adapted to iiold the beam, while freedom and authority, dogmatism and doubt, 
are agitating the scales of theological opinion." 

WILSON, (John.) UNITARIAN PRINCIPLES CONFIRMED 

BY TRINITARIAN TESTIMONIES ; being Selections from 

the Works of eminent Theologians belonging to Orthodox 

Churches. Tliis volume has more than 500 pages ; and, as it 

has quotations from over four hundred of the most approved 

theological writers in all ages, it comprises a whole library in one 

volume. Its object is to show what concessions have been made 

by Trinitarian writers to the essential truth of Unitarian views. 

Second Edition. $ LOO. 

*' By a vast deal of study, and under the guidance of a most conscientious 

accuracy and candor in selecting and verifying his quotations, the author has 

gathered from Christian writers who are nut Unitarians admissions, avowals, 

and emphatic declarations, which fully authenticate the Christian character and 

the Christian sentiment and principles of those who profess Unitarianism." — 

Rev. George E. Ellis^ in Christian Examiner, 

2* 



18 WALKER, WISE, & CO.'s PUBLICATIONS. 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL MANUALS, SERVICE AND TUNE BOOKS. 

ALLEN, (Rev. Joseph, D.D.) QUESTIONS ON SELECT 
PORTIONS OF THE FOUJl EVANGELISTS. Part 
First, per dozen, $2.00; Part Second, per dozen, $2.00. 

CARTEE, (C. SouLE.) QUESTIONS ADAPTED TO THE 
TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
Part L Matthew. Per dozen, $ 150. 
Part IL Luke akd John. Per dozen, $ 1.50. 

QUESTIONS ON THE PENTATEUCH. Per dozen, 



$ 2.00. 

CATECHISM FOR SABBATH SCHOOLS. Written for the 
Younger Children of the Preble Chapel, Portland, Me. Per 
dozen, 50 cents. 

COURSE OF CHRISTIAN INSTRUCTION. For Sunday 
Schools and Families. Comprised in a series of eight Manuals : 

L EARLY RELIGIOUS LESSONS. Per dozen, 75 cents. 
II. PALESTINE AND THE HEBREW PEOPLE. With two Maps. 

Per dozen, $2.0 i. 
in. LESSONS ON THE OLD TESTAMENT. Per dozen, $2.00. 
IV. SCENES FRO.M THE LIFE OF JESUS. Per dozen, $2.00. 
V. BOOKS AND CHARACTERS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

Per dozen, §0.00. 
VI. LESSONS UPON RELIGIOUS DUTIES AND CHRISTIAN 

MORALS. Per dozen S"2.40. 
VII. DOCTRINES OF SCRIPTURE. Per dozen, 5^2.00. 
VIII. SCENES FROM CHRISTIAN HISTORY. Per dozen, $5.00. 

FIRST BOOK FOR SUNDAY SCHOOLS. Per dozen, 62 cts. 

FOX, (Rev. Thomas B ) THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 

Arranged for Families and Sunday Schools. Per dozen, $ 2.25. 

FULLER, (Rev. Arthur B.) MANUAL OF CHRISTIAN 
DOCTRINES AND INSTITUTIONS ; with Answers in the 
Language of Scripture. For the Use of Bible Classes, Sunday 
Schools, and Private Christians. Per dozen, 75 cents. 

HUNTINGTON, (Rev. F. D ) LESSONS ON THE PARA- 
BLES OF THE SAVIOUR. For Sunday Schools and 
Families. Per dozen, $ 3.00. 

MUZZEY, (Rev. A. B.) SABBATH-SCHOOL SERVICE 
AND HYMN BOOK. Square 16mo. Per dozen, $ 2.00. 

ONE HUNDRED SCRIPTURE LESSONS. A Manual for 
Sabbath Schools and Families. Per dozen, 75 cents. 



WALKER, WISE, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 19 

PEABODY, (Rkv. E ) SCRIPTimE CATECHISM OF THE 
CHRIS ri AN RELIGION. Stated in the Words of the Bible. 
Per dozen, Sl.OO. 

PHILLIPS, (Hon. Stephen C) SUNDAY-SCHOOL SER- 
VICE-BOOK. In two parts. Half-mor. Per dozen, $3.00. 

Part L DEVOTIONAL EXERCISES AND PRAYERS FOR THE 

SCHOOL. Per dozen, S 1.50. 
Part II. HYMNS FOR THE SCHOOL. Per dozen, $2.00. 

PRAY, (Lewis G.) BOSTON SUNDAY-SCHOOL HYMN- 
BOOK; with Devotional Exercises. Per dozen, $3.00. 

THE CHRISTIAN'S CATECHISM; or, Lessons 

FROM THE Old and New Testaments on Religion and 
Morality. For the Use of Families and Sunday Schools. 
Per dozen, $ 1.25. 

PROGRESSIVE LESSONS FOR SUNDAY SCHOOLS. Per 
dozen, $ 1.2.5. 

QUESTION-BOOK ON THE LIFE OF JESUS. Prepared 
for the Howard Sunday School, connected with tlie Pitts Street 
Chapel. By the Superintendent. Per dozen, 75 cents. 

QUESTIONS ON THE GOSPELS. By a Teacher in Rev. Dr. 
Peabody's Sunday School, Portsmouth, N. H. Per dozen, $ 5.00. 

QUESTIONS ON ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES. By the Author 
of " Questions on the Gospels." Per dozen, $ 2.50. 

QUESTIONS ON THE OLD TESTAMENT. Per dozen, 
$ 5.00. 

STONE, (Edwin M.) HYMNS AND TUNES FOR VESTRY 
AND CONFERENCE MEETINGS. New and enlarged 
edition. Square 16rao. Per dozen, $2.50. 

SUNDAY-SCHOOL LITURGY. Prepared under the supervision 
of the Sunday-school Society. 16mo. Cloth, flexible, $ 3.50 ; 
Cloth, boards,' $ 4.00. 

WARE, (Rev. J. F. W.) HYMNS AND TUNES FOR SUN- 
DAY-SCHOOL WORSHIP. Per dozen, $ 2.50. 

WHITE, (Edward L.) SUNDAY SINGING-BOOK. Being 
a Collection of Hymns with appropriate Music, designed as a 
Guide and Assistant to the Devotional Exercises of Sunday 
Schools and Families ; comprising also the Elements of Music, 
with Directions for a g.ood Development of the Voice, and Vocal 
Exercises. Square 16mo. Per dozen, $ 1.50. 

WORCESTER ASSOCIATION, CATECHISM OF THE. In 
Three Parts. Per dozen, $ LOO. 



20 WALKER, WISE, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



VALUABLE MISCELLANEOUS BOOKS. 

BUDS FOR THE BRIDAL WREATH. A Wedding Gift 
18mo. 38 cents ; full gilt, 50 cents. 

"The selections are judicious and appropriate, and designed, as the title indi- 
cates, for tlie new hridal home." 

"Clersrynien will find it just what they want, wherewith to reciprocate the 
• fee ' when not able to indulge in a costlier returti." 

ELEMENTS OF CHARACTER. By Mary G. Chandler. 

Second Edition. 16mo. 63 cents. 

" The presence of a thoughtful and richly-cnltivated mind entitles this work 
to a place among the higher productions of American female literature." — Har- 
pery^ Mau'a-Jnr. 

"Whoever reads the book once, with a right purpose, will be sure to read it 
twice, and he will cet gleams of the highest truths while seeking the best max- 
ims of conduct." — Reiristcr. 

EUTHANASY; or. Hnpry Talk towards the End of Life. By 
William MoiNTFOKD. 12mo. $1.00. See page 14. 

HERE AND HEREAFTER ; or. The Two Altars. By Anna 
Athern, Author of " Delia Arlington." 12ino. $1.00. 

" It is a deservedly popular work, free from the contaminations of most of the 
novels of the day, and leaving impressions of the most salutary kind." — Ports- 
mouth Journal. 

HIGHWAYS OF TRAVEL. Sec Ixitest PtibUcations, Y,iige 5. 

HITS AT AMERICAN WHIMS, AND HINTS FOR HOME 
USE. See Lahst Publications, page 5. 

LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. By Dr. Eliot. 

LECTURES TO YOUNG WOMEN. By Dr. Eliot. 

See page 12. 

WARE, (^Irs. Mart L.) MEMOIR OF. By Rev. Edward 
B. Hall, D.D. 12mo. With fine portrait on steel. Cloth, 
$ 1 .00. 

" It is surely one of the most profitable and delightful books we ever read." — 
Burlinfftou Cmtrirr. 

"We reeard this book as one of the most useful that could be written." — 
Eastern Mail. 

" it seems hard for us to believe that a more saintly woman ever walked the 

earth The volume is distinguished for its pathetic mlerest." — JVcwark Jld- 

vcrtiscr. 

" A book like this is a great gift to the world. It is a light on the pathway of 
everyday life." — Buffalo Ccmmrrrial. 

" A work ofexceedinc interest." — Lowell Courier. 

"We should rejoice to place the book in the hands of every young woman 
in whom we take an interest." — Christian Register. 

WOINIAN'S RIGHT TO LABOR ; or. Low Wages and Hard 
Work. See Latest Publications, page 6. 



WALKER, WISE, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 21 



HYMN-BOOKS, LITURGIES, ETC. 

ALTAH at II0:MK. a Collection of Prayers for Private and 
Social Use, written bv Eminent Ministers in and near Boston. 
With appropriate Selections from Scripture, Collects, and Lit- 
anies. 16mo. Cloth, 60 cents; bevelled boards, 80 cents. 

The remarkable success of this volume — edition after edition hav- 
ing been called for — is the best evidence that it meets a long-felt 
want. 

" It has been prepared in a devout and earnest spirit, in excellent taste, and 
freedom from sectarian and polemical bias. We commend this work to the fa- 
vorable attention of tlie public." — Bo^itun Atlas. 

»' From a careful perusal we liave no liesitation in saying that it is a book of 
uncomm<ui excellence, well adapted to multiply the blessings of private and do- 
mestic worship, and ou<ilit to tiud a pl.ice in every family." — Clinstiun Inquirer. 

"They are all written wiih simplicity and beauty, and some of lliem are 
marked by a high degree of solemnity and fervor." — Puritan Recorder. 

BOOK OF WORSHIP for Conc^regation and Home. Taken 
principally from the Old and New Testaments. 16mo. Cloth, 
38 cents ; morocco, 50 cents. 



CHRISTIAN LITURGY for the Use of the Church. By Feed- 
eric H. Hedge, D. D. 12mo. Morocco, 50 cents. 

CoNTEKTS. — Order of Service. Introductory Exercises. Salu- 
tation. Te Deum Laudamus. Morning Prayer. Evening Prayer. 
Scriptural Inductions. Tlie Stated Collects. Special Collects. Com- 
munion Service. The Rite of Baptism. The Rite of Confirmation. 
Marriage Service. Burial Service. 

" It is an excellent book for its purpose. And seeing, as we think we do, a 
growing tendency towards the use of liturgical services in our churclies, either 
in whole or in part, — that is, constantly or occasionally, — we are prepared to 
recommend this which Dr. Hedge has arranged, as on the whole most likely to 
meet the wants of the largest number of our congregations." — Christian Inquirer. 



DOMESTIC WORSHIP. By Kev. William H. Furness.D.D. 
12mo. Cloth. 50 cents. 

" It is a work of great and peculiar excellence It is admirably adapted 

to the purpose for which it was wrilten ; and it may be read again and again 
with great interest and profit by any one whe desires to enrich his mind wiih 
the piirest sentiments of devotion, and with the language in which il finds its 

best expression So remarkable is their tone of reality and genuineness, 

that we cannot brins ourselves to regard them as compositions written for a pur- 
pose, but rather as the actual iittoraiires of a pure and clovatefl soul in reverent 
and immediate communion with the Infinite Father." — Christian Examiner. 



LITURGY for Use of a Christian Church. By Rev. Chandler 
RoBBiNS, D. D. 12mo. Morocco, 50 cents ; Turkey morocco, 
$ LOO. 



22 WALKER, WISE, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

SEVEN STORMY SUNDAYS. A series of Services (including 
Seven Sermons never before published). Arranged for Home or 
Social Use. 16mo. Cloth, 60 cents. 

The London Inquirer tliiis concliHles a loiifr rotice : — "The book is full of 
beauties of the highest order, and does great credit to the taste of the compiler." 

CHRISTIAN HYMNS for Public and Private Worship. A col- 
lection compiled by a committee of the Cheshire Pastoral Asso- 
ciation. 16mo. Light sheep, 75 cents; morocco, $ 1.00; Tur- 
key morocco, marbled, $ 2.00 ; Turkey morocco, gilt edge, $ 2.50. 

Bound with Book of Worship. Morocco, $ 1.25. 

The great number of Societies which have adopted this collection 
of Hymns is sufficient evidence of the estimation in which it is held. 

CHRISTIAN PSALTER. A Collection of Psalms and Hymns 
for Social and Private Worship. Compiled by Rev. William 
P. LuNT. 12mo. Sheep, 75 cents ; morocco, $1.00. 

DISCIPLES' HYMN-BOOK. A Collection of Hymns for Public 
and Private Devotion. Edited by Rev. James Freeman 
Clarke. With Book of Worship. Sheep, 75 cents ; morocco, 
$ 1.00 ; Turkey morocco, gilt, $ 2.50. 

The circulation of this Hymn-Eook is rapidly increasing; and it is 
found to be peculiarly adapted for use — with the accompanying 
" Book of Worship " — at social meetings, in places where there is 
no settled pastor. 

HYMN-BOOK FOR CHRISTIAN WORSHIP. Edited by Rev. 
Chandler Rc^bbins. Sheep, 75 cents; morocco, $1.00; tur- 
key morocco, gilt, S 2.50. With Liturgy. Morocco, $1.25. 
Turkey morocco, gilt, $2.50. 

HYMNS FOR THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. A Collection of 
Hymns for Public Worship. Edited by Rev. Frederic H. 
Hedge, D. D, and Rev. Frederic D. 'Huntington. 16mo. 
Sheep, 75 cents; morocco, $ 1.00; Turkey morocco, gilt, $2 50. 

" The arrancemont of the Hymns is simple, natural and convenient. The 
Hymns themselves are selected with excellent taste, and some that wo have not 
seen before are exquisitely beautiful." — Puritan Recorder. 

HYMNS FOR. THE SANCTUARY. Compiled by a Committee 
of the West Boston Society. 12mo. Morocco, $ 1.00 ; Turkey 
morocco, gilt, $ 2.50. 

HYMNS AND TUNES for the Congregation, the Sunday-School, 
and the Home. Compiled by Rev. S. Longfellow. Per 
dozen, boards, $ 6 00 ; cloth, $ 7.00. 



WALKER, WISE, & CO.'s PUBLICATIONS. 23 

LATEST PUBLICATIONS. 

RECENT INQUIRIES IN THEOLOGY. By eminent English 
Churchmen, Dr. Temple, Rowland Williams, Baden Powell, 
Jowett, &c. Being "Essays and Reviews," reprinted from 
the second London edition. Edited with an Introduction by Rev. 
Dr. Hedge. 12mo. Price, $1.25. 

" The writers are evidently men who have discovered that reason was given 
them to be used, and not to be trifled with, and that the highest problems in re- 
lijlious philosophy and cosmogony are not to be settled by the literal sense of the 
Apocalypse or the Book of Genesis." Monthly Religious Magazine. 

"The social and offi<-.ial position of the authors, their learninpr, their abilities, 
and their sincerity, courase, and earnest, reverential spirit, as attested by their 
joint publications, entitle them to an unprejudiced and considerate hearing." — 
Westminster Review. 

'* It is a most significant fruit of modern scholarship and of robust courage given 
to the treatment of the issue between the old traditionary faith and the new 
knowledge. Dr. Hedge has furnished an Introduction to this American edition, 
in which he shows how thoroughly he masters the whole scope of its contents, 
and how gratefully he recognizes the noble vigor and spirit of its writers." — 
Christian Examiner. 

HISTORICAL PICTURES RETOUCHED. A volume of Mis- 
cellanies in Two Parts. — - Part I. Studies. — Part II. Fancies. 
By Mrs. C. H. Dall, Author of " "Woman's Right to Labor." 
16mo $1.00. 

" These essays evince rare literary culture, patient industry, an earnest spirit, 
and strong reasoning powers." — Portland Transcript. 

"As a hook replete with facts, eloquently and impressively written, showing 
vast research and a mind of no common order, we do most cordially recommend 
this work to the attention of the reading public." Mount Auburn Memorial. 

*' Written with freshness of style and vigor and independence of thought." — 
JVorfolk County Journal. 

" It is a most pleasant, thoughtful, and refreshing volume." — Freewill Baptist 
Q_uarterly. 

" Good to keep as a book of reference, and good to read because of its 

entertaining and brilliant sketches." — Christian Examiner. 

SAWYER'S TRANSLATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

New, Revised, and Improved Edition. 12mo. Cloth, $1.00. 

Morocco, $1.25. Eleventh Thousand. 
This work has been steadily growing in favor, and before the end 
of two years from the date of publicationj ten thousand copies had been 
sold. 

"This is a remarkable book: it adopts the latest improvements in the text, 
translates sensibly and judiciously, judges impartially, and perhaps has solved — 
who knows.? — the Gordian knot of a new translation." — Christian Inquirer, 
Jfew York. 

"This new version ought to have a pUce in every family in the land." — 
Evening Transcript, Boston. 

" The translation is singularly accurate, and evinces careful, conscientious, 
and diligent scholarship." — J^ew York EvangelUit. 

"Should all Christians have this book on their table, they would have many 
an ancient difficulty made easier by it, and many an antiquated error corrected." 
— Philadelphia Evening Journal. 

KATHERINE MORRIS. An Autobiography. Bv the Author of 
'•Step by Step; or Delia Arlington," and "Here and Here- 
after." 12mo. $1.00. 
Without any loud pretensions, or attempts at creatin a sensation, 



24 WALKER, AVISE, & CO.'s PUBLICATIONS. • 

this thorouGrhly good book has noiselessly made its Avay into the hands 
of appreciative readers and critics. Even the London Athencnujii gives 
it a hearty coniniendation for its spirit, and execution. 

" Amons the excellent roliaions tales wliich exhibit in so attrartive form many 
phases of the popular Christianity, we are friad tn tail special attention to one i.f 
the Iritest, and, it seems to ns, one of the best." — Chri.'^iian Examiner. 

" Pervaded by a fine religions spirit, it leaves the best impression which this 
kind of literature is capable of prodncinp." — Rclin-iovs .Mufraziiie. 

" The earnest piety of a tnio (Miristian is constantly manifest, and the moral of 
the tale is well inculcated." — Haturdaij Evening Qaictte. 

THE BOY INVENTOR. A Memoir of Matthew Edwards, by the 
Author of " The Age of Fable." Illustrated. ICmo. 50 cents. 

Karely does a little book make its way so rapidly. The first edi- 
tion (one thousand copies) sold in about six weeks. Hundreds of 
critical notices could be appended, indicating- the favor with whicli it 
has been received by the press. The burden of all is, that the volume 
is invaluable as a stimulation to patient industry, and improvement of 
opportunities. Every boy in the land should read it. 

THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES; or, 

Notices (f the Lives and Opinions of some of the Early Fathers, 
with si)ecial Reference to the Doctrine of the Trinity, ilhistrating 
its Late Origin and Gradual Formation. By Alvan Lamson, 
D.D. 8vo. $1.75. 

'•' In this erudite work, an exposition is piven of the early theolopy of the 
Christian Church, as exemplified in the opinions of Justin ISiartyr, Clement of 
Alexandria, OriL-en, and Eissebius." — JV". Y. Tribune. 

" Dr. Lamsim's careful habits of inquiry, sagacious discernment, candid mod- 
eration, familiyriiy with ancient learninp, and lucid and direct style, have pro- 
duced a work full of entertaining informatitm, which can be depended npon for 
its arcuracy, and attractive by its liierary execution." — Christian Rr<risl.cr. 

"We conceive this to be a hii^hly valuable publication. It shows the human 
orifcin of the dtctrino of the Trinity, and traces its <:radu,il growth, and incor- 
poration into the Christian Church." — Christian Ambuasadcr. 

In addition to other forcible testimony on tliis side the Atlantic, the 
London Critical Journals bear witness to Dr. Lamson's scholarly 
ability and fairness. 

UNITARIANIS:M defined. The Scripture Doctrine of the 
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. A Course of Lectures by Rev. 
Dr. Farley, of Brooklyn. 12mo. 75 cents. 

" A more clear, full, and candid statement of the question at issue between the 
Unitarian and Orthodox theories of Christianity it is impossible to make. His 
plea is that of a lawyer, — calm, careful, and nnimpassioned ; and there is not a 
word in it to pive oflTence. even to those whose opinions it criticises. Such a 
work is sure to find an extensive and permanent circulation, and will take rank 
with the best standard treatises. We commend it to our readers as a book worth 
owiiinu." — Tauntrn Republican. 

" It would be difficult to find more pertinent quotations from the Bible, clo.«e 
reasoninp, and forcible application of larre theological readinp on the subject, in 

the same limited space We have been jiarticularly pleapcd with the cl(<s- 

iitp lecture, which is devoted to the consideration <.f the antiquity of Unitarian- 
ism, and sketches, in a masterly summary, its history in the world." — Christian 
Register. 



u 



{fC^ For list of our own Publications, comprising some of the most impoi-lant 
denominational works, see preceding Catalogue. 



ADDITIONAL CATALOGUE 

OP 

ST^^D^^RD BOOKS, 

CHIEFIA' IIY 

EMINENT UNITARIAN DIVINES, 

rOK SALE BY 

WALKER, WISE, & CO., 

PUBLISHERS FOR THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, 

245 Washington Street, Boston. 

The subjoined List comprises a portion of the most noticeable 
Books ox Hand, to which additions o^ New Publications will con- 
stantly be made. 

ALLEN, (Eev. Joseph H.) TEN DISCOURSES ON ORTHO- 
DOXY. 75 cents. 

ALTAR AT HOME. A Collection of Prayers for Private and 
Social Use, written by Unitarian Ministers in and near Boston. 
12mo. 60 cents. 9th edition. 

BARTOL, (Rev. C. A.) THE CHRISTIAN BODY AND 
FORM. A Scries of Sermons by Rev. C. A. Bartol, Junior 
Pastor of the West Church, Boston. 12mo. $ 1.00. 

CHURCH AND CONGREGATION : a Plea for their 

Unity. 12mo. 31.00. 

BELLOWS, (Rev. H. A., D. D.) RESTATEMENTS OF 
CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 12mo. $1.25. 

BRIGGS, (Rev. G. W.) BOW IN THE CLOUD. Discourses 
by Rev. G. W. Briggs. 16nio. 75 cents. 

BROOKS, (Rev. Ciias.) FAMILY PRAYERS. 12mo. 75 cts. 

CHRISTIxVN IN HIS CLOSET. 12mo. 50 cents. 

BROOKS, (Rev. C. T.) SIMPLICITY OF CHRIST'S 

TEACHINGS SET FORTH IN SKRMONS. 12mo. !$ 1.25. 
BUCKMINSTERS, MEMOIR OF THE, by Eliza Buckmin- 

ster Lee. 12mo. $1.25. 
BULFINCH, (Rev. Stephen G.) HOLY LAND AND ITS 

INHABITANTS. 18mo. 50 cents. 
BURNAP, (Rev. G. W.) LECTURES ON THE TRINITY. 

12mo. $1.00 
POPULAR OBJECTIONS TO UNITARIANISM 

CONSIDERED AND ANSWERED. IGmo. 38 cents. 
WHAT IS UNITARIANISM 1 12mo. $1.00. 



2 WALKER, WISE, & CO. S 

CHRISTIANITY : ITS ESSENCE AND EVI- 
DENCE. 12mo. $1.00. 

DISCOURSES ON THE RECTITUDE OF HU- 
MAN NATURE. 12mo. $1.00. 

BUXTON. A STUDY FOR YOUNG MEN; or, a Sketch of Sir 
Thomas Fowell Buxton. By Rev. Thomas Binney. 16mo. 
38 cents. 

CHAPIN, (E. H., D.D.) DISCOURSES ON THE LORD'S 
PRAYER. 12mo. 63 cents. 

• EXTEMPORANEOUS DISCOURSES. I2mo. Sl.OO. 

HUMANITY IN THE CITY. 12mo. 75 cents. 

SELECT SERMONS. 12mo. $1.00. 

CHILD, (L. Maria.) PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 
3 vols. 12mo. $4.00. 

DANA, (Mrs. M. S. B.) LETTERS ON THE TRINITY. 12mo. 
75 cents. 

DEWEY, (Dr. Orville.) WORKS. 3 vols. 12mo. $3.00. 

ELLIS, (Rev. George E ) HALF-CENTURY OF THE UNI- 
TARIAN CONTROVERSY, with particular reference to its 
Orif^in, its Course, and its prominent Subjects among the Con- 
gregationalists of Massachusetts. 8vo. $1.50. 

FOX, (Rev. T. B.) HINTS TO SUNDAY-SCHOOL TEACH- 
ERS. 16mo. 25 cents. 

. MINISTRY OF JESUS CHRIST. ISmo. 38 cents. 

SKETCH OF THE REFORMATION. ISmo. 50 

cents. 

FROTHINGHAM, (Rev. N. L.) SERMONS, in the Order of a 

Twelvemonth. 12mo. $1.00. 
FURNESS, (Rev. W. H., D. D.) HISTORY OF JESUS. 12mo. 

$ 1.00. 

DISCOURSES. 12mo. $1.00. 

THOUGHTS ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER 

OF JESUS OF NAZARETH. 12mo. $1.00. 
GREENWOOD, (Rev. F. W. P.) DISCOURSES. Portrait. 2 

vols. 12mo $2.50. 
HISTORY OF THE KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON. 

12mo. 50 cents. 

LIVES OF THE ^VPOSTLES. Plates. 16mo. 75 



cents. 

SERMONS TO CHILDREN. 16mo. 50 cents. 

SERMONS OF CONSOLATION. 16mo. $1.00. 

HUNTINGTON, (Rev. F. D.) SERMONS FOR THE PEO- 
PLE. 12mo. $1.25. 

LIVERMORE, (x\.A.) COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPELS. 
2 vols. 12mo. Each. 83 cents. 



COMMENTARY ON THE ACTS. 12mo. 83 cts. 
COMMENTARY ON ROMANS. 12mo. 75 cents. 
DISCOURSES. 12mo. $1.25. 



ADDITIONAL CATALOGUE. 

LECTURES TO YOUNG MEN. 16mo. 50 cents. 
MARRIAGE OFFERING. 16mo. 63 cents. 



LOWELL, (Chas., D.D.) PRACTICAL SERMONS. 12mo. 

s$1.23. 
MARTINEAU, (James.) ENDEAVORS AFTER THE 

CHRISTIAN LIFE. Two volumes in one. 12mo. $1.25. 
These are tlie brilliant discourses which first made Professor Martineau 
extensively known to American readers. 

MISCELLANIES. 12mo. $ L25. 

MAYO, (Rev. A. D.) SYMBOLS OF THE CAPITOL. 12mo. 
$ 1.00. 

MOUNTFORD, (William,) MARTYRIA : A Legend. Where- 
in are contained Homilies, Conversations, and Incidents of the 
Reign of Edward the Sixth. With an Introduction by Rev. 
F. i). HuNTixGTON. 16mo. 75 cents. 

MUZZEY, (Rev. A. B.) YOUNG MAN'S FRIEND. 16mo. 
38 cents. 

NICHOLS, (I., D.D.) HOURS WITH THE EVANGELISTS. 
2 vols. 12mo. $2.50. 

OSGOOD, (Rev. S. B) THE HEARTHSTONE; or, Home 
Truths from a City Pulpit. 12mo. $1.00. 

MILESTONES IN OUR LIFE JOURNEY. 12mo. 

S 1.00. • 

STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY. 12mo. 

$1.00. 

GOD WITH MEN; or Footprints of Providential 

Leaders. 12mo. 75 cents. 

PALFREY, (J. G.) SERMONS. 12mo. 75 cents. 

PARKER, (Theodore.) DISCOURSE ON MATTERS PER- 
TAINING TO RELIGION. 12mo. $1.25. 

SERMONS OF THEISM, ATHEISM, AND THE 

POPULAR THEOLOGY. 12mo. $1.25. 

TEN SERMONS OF RELIGION. 12mo. $1.25. 

ADDITIONAL SPEECHES, ADDRESSES, AND 

OCCASIONAL SERMONS. 2 vols. 12mo. $2 50. 

CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 



12mo. $1.25. 

EXPERIENCE AS A MINISTER. 12mo. 50 cents. 

PARKMAN, (Francis, D.D.) OFFERING OF SYMPATHY 

TO THE AFFLICTED : especially to Bereaved Parents. 

12mo. 75 cents. 
PEABODY, (Rev. A. P.) FOUR SERMONS, connected with 

the Opening of the Church of the South Parish, Portsmouth, N. H. 

16mo. flex, 40 cents. 

LECTURES ON CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 12mo. 

75 cents. 
PEABODY, (Rev. Ephraim.) CHRISTIAN DAYS AND 

THOUGHTS. Fine Portrait. 12mo. Antique, bevelled boards. 

$1.25. 



4 WALKER, WISE, & CO S. CATALOGUE. ' ^ 

PEABODY, (Rev. W. B. 0.) LITERARY REMAINS. Edited 

by Everett Peabody. 12mo. $1.25. 
RELIGIOUS MISCELLANY. Edited by Rev. George E. Ellis. 

12mo. $1.00. 
ROBBINS, (Rev. Chandler, D. B.) PORTRAIT OF A 

CHRISTIAN DRAWN FROM LIFE. A Memoir of M. E. 

Clapp. 12mo. 50 cents. 
ROGERS, (Henry.) THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH ; or, A Visit 

to a Religious Sceptic. 12mo. S 1.25. 
A DEFENCE OF " THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH." 

Being a Rejoinder to Professor Newman's " Reply." Also the 

" Reply," by Prof. Newman. 12mo. $ 1.00. 
SIMMONS, (Rev. George F.) SERMONS. 16mo. 75 cents. 
STEARNS, (Rev. S. H.) LIFE, LETTERS, AND DIS- 
COURSES. 12mo. S1.25. 
WARE, (Henry, Jr.) CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 18mo. 

38 cents. 

DISCOURSES. 2 vols. 12mo. S 2.50. 

HINTS ON EXTEMPORANEOUS PREACHING. 

17 cents. 

LIFE OF THE SAVIOUR. ISrao. 50 cents. 

LIFE OF PRIESTLEY. 12mo. 75 cents. 

LIFE OF AVORCESTER. 12mo. 75 cents. 

MEMOIR OF OBERLIN. 16mo. 75 cents. 

PROGRESS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. ISmo. 

31 cents. 

WORKS. 4 vols. 12mo. $3.50. 

MEMOIR OF. By Dr. John Ware. 12mo. $1.25. 

WARE, (Prof. Henry.) INQUIRY INTO THE FOUNDA- 
TION, EVIDENCES, AND TRUTHS OF RELIGION. 

2 vols. 12mo. S1.50. 
WARE, (J. F. W.) THE SILENT PASTOR. 18mo. 50 cents. 
WARE, (William.) AURELIAN ; or, Letters from Rome. 

12mo. S1.25. 

JULIAN ; or, Scenes in Judasa. 12mo. Sl.25. 

ZENOBIA ; or. The Fall of Palmyra. 12mo. $1.25. 

WHITMAN'S LETTERS TO A UNIVERSALIST. 16mo. 

75 cents. 
WORCESTER, (Noah.) BIBLE-NEWS OF THE FATHER, 

SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT, in a Series of Letters. 12mo. 

36 cents. 
This fruit of the learninjr and candor of the late venerable Dr. Worcester was 
first published as early as the year 1810. Probably no work lias done more to 
induce a careful perusal of the Scriptures on the points here discussed. 



'^m 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date; March 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



